OpenFreecycle won at OpenHackLondon!

OpenFreecycle

Our 24-hour hack: OpenFreecycle

URL: dharmafly.com/openfreecycle

Streuth. Hot on the heels of last week’s UnLtdWorld award, I was amazed to experience the web application that I created with Tom Leitch being awarded the top two prizes Yahoo’s OpenHackLondon. And this, after winning a prize with ‘HackHUD‘ at the previous Hack Day London, two years earlier (the famous one, when it rained inside Alexandra Palace).

OpenHackLondon is an opportunity for web developers and programmers to get together, to collaborate and experiment with new ideas in technology. The focus is a 24-hour (overnight) hacking challenge, with a two-minute demo by each team, and prizes in several categories.

OpenFreecycle

Our entry was OpenFreecycle – an itch that I’d been wanting to scratch for a couple of years. This was an attempt to make community sharing of free, unwanted items much more easy and accessible. Sort of like eBay, but for free. Continue reading »

We Won a Bric!

Premasagar and the BRIC Award

The BRIC award - photo by Jane Middlehurst

At last week’s beautiful UnLtdWorld first birthday gathering, I was honoured to collect a shiny BRIC award, for “using technology for social good in the most creative and innovative way”.

Thank you to everyone who voted for Dharmafly, and to all who have supported us in the last 2 years.

There were five award categories, Continue reading »

Nominated for an UnLtdWorld BRIC Award

Inside-out Lego brick (by oskay)

Dharmafly are chuffed to have been nominated for a BRIC award with UnLtdWorld, the social network for social entrepreneurs. You can vote with your feet (erm, your mouse) right here.

Since its launch, one year ago, UnLtdWorld has gone from strength to strength as a platform for collaboration, helping people to work together for social change. We’re listed in the Digital Award category, for those “using technology for social good in the most creative and innovative way”:

The BRIC Awards aim to recognise the most active, inspiring and original members of UnLtdWorld, as voted for by its community.

They encapsulate what UnLtdWorld stands for: Business, Resources, Insight and Community – and members selected as nominees reflect a well-rounded approach to those elements.

Voting ends Friday 24th April, 5pm (UK time), and the winners will be announced at UnLtdWorld’s first birthday celebration, on May 5th.

Twitter – The Simplest Little Big Complicated Website in the World

Out my Window (by Paul Keleher)

Twitter: What it is, why you need it, and how you can use it to change your world

What is Twitter?

Twitter is a website that lets visitors write short messages (limited to 140 characters) that answer the perennial question: What are you doing?

Twitter began as a way for employees to communicate within organisations, but gradually expanded as a way for friends, colleagues and contacts to share their news, thoughts and interesting discoveries with each other.

If you want to have a conversation online, you might use email or instant messaging. But if you want other people to ‘overhear’ your conversation, allowing them to join in, then Twitter is the perfect medium. Continue reading »

Twitterer Floats Away at Twestival

Mass Ascension (by a4gpa)

This month, we’re taking great pleasure in helping out both the London and Brighton Twestivals on the 12th of February. We’re donating a mind-expanding, floaty prize to the London Twestival raffle, and we’re a main sponsor for the Brighton Twestival.
Continue reading »

Twitter Gets Real

Twestival unites online friends for charity

Twestival unites online friends for charity

Twestival is a global series of local events, happening in over 100 cities worldwide (including London and Brighton), on 12 February 2009.

Twestival bridges the gap between the off- and online worlds. It provides a chance for communities on Twitter (a web service that allows users to share their thoughts with their peers) to meet in person and to raise money for Charity:water, who provide clean water for people in developing countries.

Dharmafly spoke to Amanda Rose, the enterprising organiser who got the Twestival ball rolling, to find out more about Twestival and why Twitter is suited to this kind of crowd-sourced social action. Continue reading »

Wishing You a…

Season's Greetings
(Hint: Take a closer look)

To all the beautiful people we’ve worked with over the past year… to all our readers and contributors, family, friends, peers and, well, everybody else…

Have a sumptuous Christmas (or Winter Solstice, or what have you) and an inspirational New Year. Be well, be great and be here with us again in 2009.

Big Love,
Dharmafly


I is for iPhone

iPhone apps shown above (l-r):
Continue reading »

Put Yourself on the Map

EastHampshire.org Map

If you had a map and you could show it to anyone, what would you put on it?

These days, maps are playing a big part in the development of social media. Imagine you were to run an event, or make a journey around the world, how could you represent it online? How could you help people to find out where you are, to know what you’re doing, or even to see what you’re seeing?

As you can imagine, interactive web maps and location-based activities are not just useful for looking up addresses. We can now assign practically any piece of online content to a map, including videos, photos or location-based conversations. At last, the web doesn’t have to be so geographically anonymous anymore.

Everyone has different needs and interests, so their information might be organised in different ways: people such as film buffs, chess enthusiasts, or parents looking for baby groups might all want to find out about related activities in their local area, and web mapping can help. Continue reading »

4 Ways to Make the Most of BarCamp

Specificity Snap (by Phil Hawksworth)

We want to spend a little time reminiscing about last month’s Brighton BarCamp, one of our favourite events of the year and a time when we get to roll up our sleeves and muck in with the community.

BarCamp is a self-organised gathering of New Media enthusiasts and an important opportunity to share knowledge with peer businesses and enthusiasts. Naturally, we were keen to get involved, and we found no less than four different ways to do so:

1. Mingling

Evacuation (by Mark Wubben)

The best thing about BarCamp is the opportunity to hang out and discuss technology and business with a great bunch of like-minded people. Continue reading »

Basecamp. A Project Manager’s Friend.

Basecamp

How many hours of your life have you spent rifling through emails and looking for all the bits associated with projects? And how often have you been cc’d into an email that was only marginally relevant to your work?

If you’re into managing projects and keeping things together, then Basecamp is your friend. Basecamp is an online project-management system that keeps all of your project’s communications in one place. It comes with both paid and free packages, and while there are some excellent alternative tools out there, we find it one of the easiest to use.

Recently, Ben Sauer used it to manage our work with BBC World Service on the Talking America project. Here, he explains why he is a self-professed ‘Basecamp fanatic’…

Continue reading »