Portland's got white ones, Austin has yellow ones, Vassar has them in pink. What are they? Community bikes. Colleges, universities, even whole cities are seeing the benefits of offering their students and citizens an alternative to cars, fossil fuels, and parking lots. Want to start a shared bike program in your community? Here's how. (previously)
posted by Toekneesan on Oct 21, 2008 - 42 comments

"The amount of time it would take for the community to self-regulate -- I don't think it could sustain itself in the meantime. Anyway, I can't think of any successful online community where the nice, quiet, reasonable voices defeat the loud, angry ones on their own." —Ruling the global masses, one image at a time. The art of moderation as practiced by Heather Champ, Director of Community at Flickr. [more inside]
posted by Toekneesan on Sep 30, 2008 - 28 comments

HOMOPHONI
posted by hama7 on Oct 7, 2007 - 37 comments

Do you mix your own? Welcome to the website dedicated to making mixed tapes and cds. i like to use this site along with AMG (as a reference tool) to come up with much needed new ideas , and share them with people of similar tastes. just copy the names you find in AOTM (the ones you have no idea who they are) paste in the search engine at AMG and then listen to a sample of music from said group , to see if its your thing or not. here is a group i was introduced to a few years ago . found them ( you guessed it) on AOTM . when you find a mix you like offer to trade one of your own for it and use this site or some thing like it to share with your new friend.
posted by nola on Oct 25, 2005 - 22 comments

Vinyl Sharity There's a lot of exotic*, odd†, thrilling‡, and strangely catchy° music out there on the net. Through Weirdo Music and Record Brother, I've begun to touch the tip... And while there's a fairly proscribed etiquette regarding the sharity sites (limited time for downloads, out-of-print only, desisting when asked), I find that Free Albums and Strange Reaction have put me off of buying new RIAA albums more than Napster or Kazaa ever did. (Well, there is Regnyouth, but the downloading is such a pain in the ass for most of it that I only ever really bother with things that I own on a format that I can't convert like cassette, or that I listen to once and delete, like Interpol). But where do you go for weirdo music? Anything you've found in digging through these sites that's struck your fancy? (And if you have sharities to, well, share: You Send It, Rapidshare and MegaUpload are pretty much the gold standard.) *From Bellybongo †From WM ‡From Basic Hip °From Comfort Stand
posted by klangklangston on Sep 21, 2005 - 5 comments

Internets: Serious Business! These last few months have seen an increase in the attacks on the participatory culture of the web. The mainstream establishments, both political and corporate, have been looking with a cautious eye towards this new developing place. So far we've established that blogs can get you fired, keep you from getting a job, give pedophiles a place to ruminate on snatching your children, threaten journalistic integrity *snicker*, endanger the marketing , product planning, and product life cycles for automobile manufacturers, can infect your computer with virii, and have all sorts of negative consequences. The internets (both of them) can cause your children to be charmed, seduced, and addicted by readily available porn, and can also provide access to extremist radical and fundamentalist groups, prompting Congress to discuss more restrictive legislation (NSFW), but only for the porn. It has even been claimed that the web has given "Al Qaeda wings". P2P is blamed as causing record loses by the music industry, despite their investments in local station marketing payola. The FEC has held public hearings attended by both hemispheres of the blogosphere (amazingly in near-agreement) discussing the regulation of political speech online. The figureheads of a certain political party fear that their affiliated slice of the blogosphere may be too far-left. Newspapers and TV are leading the charge, with the internet standing in for pharmaceutical scares, yo-yo diets, and missing white women. The question is, how will the libertarian-minded digerati respond to this very real attack on the essence of web culture?
posted by rzklkng on Jul 29, 2005 - 34 comments

Worldisround lets people around the world share their travel photos and experiences with each other. (via idle type)
posted by Ufez Jones on Apr 6, 2004 - 5 comments

The Perpetual War Fund - First there was the Vice Fund (covered in Mefi Sept. 3). Now, The Perpetual War Portfolio: "an evenly weighted basket of five stocks poised to succeed in the age of perpetual war. The stocks were selected on the basis of popular product lines, strong political connections and lobbying efforts, and paid-for access to key Congressional decision makers." Somebody's going to profit from the machineries of death. Why not you?
posted by troutfishing on Dec 12, 2002 - 24 comments