Open Data

Passed on by Dave Babik of Case Closed Babik Dispute Resolution Services. See also his thoughts on using arbitration and mediation in contracts.

Arbitration:

In arbitration, parties agree to have a neutral third party, usually an attorney or retired judge who has expertise in the particular subject matter, hear the case presented and render a decision.

At the New York City DrupalCamp3, in a session on open source and business, the presenter strongly emphasized including an arbitration clause in any contract. He stressed that not only could it save a small design firm from being buried by the expense of a lawsuit, it gives a chance for the relationship with a client to be preservedd.

A New England dispute mediation provider gave further insight:

For some reason I can't bring myself to use a canned sales pitch. Partly it's because Agaric is still growing and expanding as an organization. Mostly its because we have too much business coming in (helping others with their presence) to bother trying to hone our own marketing message.

But nonetheless, when we see websites that are crying for help, we can't help but offer our services. And of course people ask us about our prices or services, and we have to say something.

The result is Agaric gets defined in hundreds of communications most people will never see.

If words this large are used to describe it, open source free software has to be good (sigmergic pretty much means "marked work"):

To appear in: B. Lutterbeck, M. Ba?rwolff & R. A. Gehring (eds.), Open Source Jahrbuch
2007, Lehmanns Media, 2007

Why is Open Access Development so Successful?
Stigmergic organization and the economics of
information
Francis Heylighen

ECCO, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
http://pcp.vub.ac.be/HEYL.html

We at Agaric Design are considering hosting our sites on a server in Germany, but we're concerned about receiving money in dollars and paying out in Euros as the dollar has fallen to three-quarters of a Euro even while the U.S. pretends to be the world's only superpower.

I sort of veered the discussion off into economic policy, so I'm posting it here for all of you who get your geopolitical analysis from web developers:

The best part of this work is meeting cool people doing cool things, and working with them and helping them do what they do.

Driscoll Associates Modular Homes is our entry into the world of prefabricated modular housing.

Because they're built in units, modular homes are actually stronger than typical wood-frame houses built on-site.

Bet you didn't know that before now either.

Of course, you've probably seen lots of modular homes and never known they were modular.

This has very little to do with web design, but lost souls on the internet may find it useful, if they need to know how to change their wireless router's network name.

From Agaric Design's own Dan Hakimzadeh:

to change your router name:

plug into it with a cord.
open browser
goto 192.168.1.1
default user is admin just hit enter, no pw
change ssid
save
relax

So I have burned hundreds of DVDs without a single one failing – which isn't supposed to happen, from what I've read.

Then, today, twice I told it to burn by typing Command-b instead of clicking "Burn." Both times the burn failed 5 minutes into the 15 minute burn, with a visible messup (a stripe like the space between songs on a vinyl record).

Does the DVD burner actually care whether I use a keyword shortcut or use the GUI (graphical user interface).

Short Version: Can web design save the world? I bloody well hope so, because we need saving. If all people who give a damn can talk and act together, we may be able to replace a lot of societally suicidal behavior with systems and actions that help all of us help each other.

Business is going very well for the Agaric Design Collective, but it doesn't take a trained anthropologist to look around the United States and know a lot of people aren't getting the opportunities they need in life.

Once you iterate quickly and react on customer feedback, you will establish a customer connection. Remember the goal is to win the customer by building what they want.

—Sanaz Ahari, Program Manager of Start.com, Microsoft

(I can't believe I started with a quote from someone at Microsoft, but it's a good one.)

From "Caveats, Disclaimers..."