Votenaweb – transparência e engajamento coletivo nas questões políticas
André Blas da empresa paulistana Webcitizen apresentou na conferência GOV 2.0 a plataforma Votenaweb que fomenta e simplifica o engajamento civil nas questões políticas do país. A plataforma que é acessível a todos os cidadãos, mostra através de descrições super simples o que o congresso esta fazendo em termos de projetos de lei, coisa que muitas pessoas não tem ideia sobre por falta de atenção contínua ou pela dificuldade de compreensão da linguagem normalmente usada em projetos de leis. O site mostra de forma bem simples a descrição dos projetos de leis que estão sendo analisados e qualquer um pode registrar-se e votar simbolicamente sim ou não para aquele projeto de lei.
O site disponibiliza uma série de recursos para acompanhar o andamento de cada projeto de lei e comparar a opnião dos cidadãos com a efetiva posição dos políticos. O Votenaweb também possibilita que cidadãos acompanhem o que cada político apresentou como projeto de lei e com isso se informar e votar com mais conhecimento em futuras eleições.
Em apenas seis meses, o Votenaweb acumulou 700 projetos de leis catalogados, + 5.000 usuários, + 100.000 votos. Na conferência, André anunciou que a webcitizen estará tornando a plataforma de programação open source para que todo país democrático possa aplicar este conceito usando a tecnologia do Votenaweb.
Assim como o design coletivo se beneficia de plataformas participativas, a democracia se fortalece quando ferramentas que fomentam a transparência e a participação dos cidadãos são amplamente utilizadas. Parabéns Webcitizen!
Tarp Surfing
Make nice videos, not war.
*Melhor frase do video: “…we’ve been tarping since the early nineties” playson…
boa @bittencool
I (Bike) Copenhagen
Copenhagen é definitivamente uma cidade modelo quando se pensa em mobilidade e qualidade de vida. O video acima, filmado pelo americano Clarence Eckerson durante a última Velo-City mostra através de imagens belíssimas, alguns recursos do sistema cicloviário da cidade. Vale a pena se deixar inspirar pelo vídeo. Repassem, para que mais e mais pessoas possam ter uma idéia de como nossas cidades podem ser.
Arte, tecnologia, universidades e fachadas
O que acontece quando designers usam tecnologia para criar arte? A resposta para uma pergunta simples como essa com certeza não vem da noite para o dia.
Nas universidades mundo a fora, a integração entre arte e tecnologia vem sendo feita de forma sistemática nos presentiando com uma série de projetos e novos caminhos para arte. Em Karlsruhe, na Alemanha, os designers Martin Fussenegger e Michael Sebastian Haase e o engenheiro Julian Adenauer criaram um rôbo que lê, interpreta artes digitais e dispara bolas de paintball criando de pinturas incríveis em fachadas de prédios. Nomeado FacadePrinter, ele pode ser usado para fins artísticos mas também em situações de calamidades públicas.
Eu tenho certeza que no Brasil, já existe uma série de pessoas apoiando essa integração, porém muitas instituições de ensino ainda tem dificuldades de abraçar arte e tecnologia dentro de um mesmo departamento. Quando isso acontecer por completo, não só teremos respostas para a pergunta inicial como estaremos participando da criação do novo paradigma da arte e nossas fachadas nunca mais serão as mesmas.
Bicicletas e carros, uma rua.
O artista e ativista da bicicleta Cabelo colocou imagens em seu blog de discos de vinil transformados em placas em prol da bike pela cidade. Deu vontade de colocar algumas aqui no Rio.
Hello HP, meu nome é LEGO
Horseattack criou essa beleza de impressora feita com peças de Lego. Deixou pra lá Mindstroms e desenvolveu tudo com sensores e motores próprios. Atenção HP, geração Y está ai.
Via geekdad
Scraper Bikes
Atitude positiva e criatividade, a galera da scraper bikes pode inspirar muita gente. Mas tem que cumprir alguns requisitos para entrar no time. Saiba mais.
Scrapertown from California is a place. on Vimeo.
Skateboard Animation by Tilles Singer
Got to be inspired by this beautiful stop-motion video by Tilles Singer made entirely with magazine cut-outs.
via Patchwork
DIY group sends Balloon to the Stratosphere
Want to see how the earth looks like from way way up in the skies? send a balloon equipped with some smart electronics and let it do some sightseeing for you. That’s what this group of hardware hackers did. Their balloon reached 70000 feet, aprox. 21 Kilometers of altitude and was discovered after landing thanks to it’s google android phone hacked with an app that send an SMS with it’s position whenever it got a cell phone signal. NASA, prepare for some competition in the skies!
via Wired
Bike Tuning
Monareta Rebaixada
Monareta Boom Box
Ceci Loucamente Tuned
Call it disruptive innovation or user innovation, bike tuning is one of the seeds of the DIY movement. Here in Brazil, specially away from the big cities, a whole lot is happening. Check the blog Ceci Brisa Tuning for example, and you will find numerous stories of custom bikes made by passionate users. They exchange tutorials and tips around their creations and are proud to show of their skills. We love it!
photos source: Ceci Brisa Tuning
Inspiring Bastard
What if the whole idea of innovation awards and design prizes could be turned up side down to a bottom up decision process? What if we could show our appreciation to the people that inspires us, giving them something to be proud of?
After writing about the Madmax Bike spotted in Lyon, I started thinking that it would be awesome if we would be able to give an award to everyone that inspires us.
The Inspiring Bastard Awards is born, at least as an experiment. And the first one to receive the award is the creator of the madmax bike that made me think of this award in the first place. We don’t know his or her identity yet, but as soon as he or she gets in touch we will send an Inspiring Bastard T-shirt.
For this to be a true bottom up movement, I imagine to set up a dedicated page on the Letsevo website, with a form where anyone can suggest an Inspiring Bastard, and send them an Inspiring Bastard t-shirt. In the website, there would be a page for every inspiring bastard, their stories and an indication for the person who gave him/her the award.
Who do you think deserves to receive an Inspiring Bastard Award?
Spotted in Lyon: Hot wheels redefined
If you are a madmax kind of guy, this is the bike you should be riding. I love to bump into this kind of creations, it really inspires me. This bike is so awesome, I guess it was made from an old moped frame, adapted to bike….any clues on which model? If you know the owner of this bike call him up to get some more info for us, we all want to know.
Eurobike 2009
Hello! Welcome to my first post here. When I told Henrique that I was going to this event, he suggested I write a post for the site and share some of what I had experienced. So here it is….
I had the pleasure of going to Friedrichshafen this year to attend three days of the Eurobike international bicycle trade show. It was absolutely mind-boggling the size of this thing. Tens of thousands of bikes in about 12 football field sized exhibition halls. It took me three days of seven hours per day to see every booth, and I’m sure I missed a lot of what the show had to offer. The big story this time was the rise of electric bikes. There were two different test tracks where you could try any of the models from several dozen manufacturers. This part of the industry is huge, and growing. Fixed gear bikes are also all the rage, and everyone seems to have one. There were a few notable bikes and accessories that I thought would be appropriate for Letsevo, so check out the pictures (and don’t forget to read the descriptions below the pictures) in the gallery to get a feel of where we’ve gotten to in this crazy cycling world.
Spotted in the streets of Monaco: A micro electric car
I saw this little car last week in Monaco and went on to research where it comes from. It’s the Newteon Estrima, Newteon describes itself as an electric vehicles distribution network and they are based in France. They market a series of electric vehicles but I couldn’t really tell if they build and develop the cars themselves.
Homemade carbon bike frame
Derek from Lahr Cycles posted the development photos on his homemade bike frame at the ride monkey forums. It’s really interesting to see that you don’t need much to create a working model, from here, it can only get better. Way to go Derek. Check the finished model at the forum thread.
BLU’s Muto wall animation
MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.
Italian artist Blu wows everyone with his amazingly crafted wall animation.
More of his work on blublu.org
Hannover Industry Fair 2009
Here are the photos of my visit to this year’s Hannover Industry Fair, Germany’s most important innovation event. I had an amazing time during my 2 day visit to the fair.
Under Highlights are the great work of my friends from the school of arts and Design in Offebach, some information on components and innovations on electric vehicles and a lot of new materials!
It took me more energy than I though, putting all the pictures and writing about them, I hope you enjoy it!
