Complementary & Alternative Currency

More information can be found:

http://www.complementarycurrency.org/

http://www.community-exchange.org/

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Whole Earth Catalog

After the WHOLE EARTH CATALOG and its descendants ceased publication, New Whole Earth LLC, headed by entrepreneur and philanthropist Samuel B. Davis, acquired the intellectual property and physical assets of the family of publications from the Point Foundation.

We thought it was important to preserve the heritage of the WHOLE EARTH CATALOG and its succeeding publications. Although the CATALOG’s heyday was during a specific and turbulent period of American history, the ideas found in it and in its related publications continue to engage the brightest minds of the 21st century—and Whole Earth LLC believes that those ideas should be preserved as they were originally disseminated.

This collection is not complete—and probably never will be—but it is a gift to readers who loved the CATALOG and those who are discovering it for the first time. The great stuff found on these pages is a celebration of the genius of Stewart Brand and all those associated with the WHOLE EARTH family of publications.

Interesting reading

[wholeearth.com]

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Sustainable Farming Presentation

Sustainable Farming

You can view and download the presentation here (.pdf, 4.13 MB). You can also download a version with smaller file size (.pdf, 2.73 MB, sans fancy background!). Let me know if you have any comments, suggestions, corrections, or questions. I’ll be happy to share original presentation in .keynote or .ppt format, just drop me a line.

Source of material

Thank you: Chinmay Soman

[sustainable-farming.blogspot.com]

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Cartagen 0.5 – Mapping Tools

Cartagen (http://cartagen.org) is a vector-based, client-side framework for rendering maps in native HTML 5. Written in JavaScript, it uses the new Canvas element to load mapping data from various sources, including OpenStreetMap.

In short, Cartagen lets you make beautiful, customized maps with a simple stylesheet.

Maps are styled with Geographic Style Sheets (GSS), a cascading stylesheet specification for geospatial information – a decision which leverages literacy in CSS to make map styling more accessible. However, GSS is a scripting language as well, making Cartagen an ideal framework for mapping dynamic data. See About Gss and Gss Usage for more on GSS.

Mobile devices and networks have made possible distributed reporting of geographic and temporal data, from unfolding natural disasters to organizing protests in real time. Cartagen allows users to integrate real time data streams and display them in novel ways.

Cartagen 0.5 Demo from Jeffrey Warren on Vimeo.

source

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Solar cooker plans

There is a wide variety of solar cooker designs, many of them very simple to build from inexpensive, easy-to-obtain materials. Start by choosing a cooker design type based on your requirements. The table below lists strengths and weaknesses of the most common types, and shows some popular cookers of each type. Below each table is a all cooker plans of that cooker type.

plans and resources

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DIY Permablitz Kit

DIY Permablitz Kit

This is a useful Do It Yourself Permablitz kit.

DIY Permablitz Kit (PDF)

Source

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A Free Toolkit for NGOs and Social Enterprise

NGO Tool Kit

IDEO partnered with International Development Enterprises (IDE), Heifer International, ICRW, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to create a toolkit for applying Human-Centered Design to inspire new solutions to difficult challenges within communities of need.

Human-Centered Design is a process used for decades to create new solutions for companies and organizations. Human-Centered Design can help you enhance the lives of people. This process has been specially-adapted for organizations like yours that work with people in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Human-Centered Design (HCD) will help you hear people’s needs in new ways, create innovative solutions to meet these needs, and deliver solutions with financial sustainability in mind.

The Toolkit is divided into four sections:

The Introduction will give an overview of HCD and help you understand how it might be used alongside other methods.
Download the Intro Guide.pdf

The Hear guide will help your design team prepare for fieldwork and understand how to collect stories that will serve as insight and inspiration. Designing meaningful and innovative solutions that serve your customers begins with gaining deep empathy for their needs, hopes and aspirations for the future. The Hear booklet will equip the team with methodologies and tips for engaging people in their own contexts to delve beneath the surface.
Download the Hear Guide

The Field Guide and Aspirations cards are a complement to the Hear guide; these are the tools your team will take with them in order to conduct research.
Download the Field Guide
Download the Aspirations Cards

The Create guide will help your team work together in a workshop format to translate what you heard from people into frameworks, opportunities, solutions, and prototypes. During this phase, you will move from concrete to more abstract thinking in identifying themes and opportunities and back to the concrete with solutions and prototypes.
Download the Create Guide

The Deliver guide will help catapult the top ideas you have created toward implementation. The realization of solution includes rapid revenue and cost modeling, capability assessment, and implementation panning. The activities offered in this phase are meant to complement your organization’s existing implementation processes and may prompt adaptations to the way solutions are typically rolled out.
Download the Deliver Guide

Thanks RT @technoshaman RT @openp2pdesign RT @ocell RT @idLaurenn: IDEO has released a #HumanCenteredDesign free toolkit: http://bit.ly/cHOaq

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Draw your site in 3D using free Sketchup

Google SketchUp is software that you can use to create 3D models of anything you like. Build models and add them to Google Earth.  You can use SketchUp to draw your permaculture site and then simulate everything from shaddows (depending on the time of day/season) to site layout.

Google SketchUp 

The SketchUp Show (Youtube tutorials)

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Google Pack

Google Pack is software specifically selected by Google for you to use for free.

• Always free – no trial versions or spyware
• Ready to use in just a few clicks

Products include (depending on region of the world):

• Google Apps – Google Mail, Calendar, Docs 
• Norton Security Scan
• Google Desktop
• Google Photos Screensaver
• Firefox with Google Toolbar
• RealPlayer
• Google Earth
• Google Toolbar for IE
• Spyware Doctor
• Picasa
• Adobe Reader
• Skype

Google Pack

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Find Open Source Alternatives to commercial software

osalt.com open source alternative – your quick guide to the best open source software.

Open vs. closed

Find open source alternatives to your favourite commercial products. Browse through our software categories and compare pros and cons of both commercial products as well as open source software.

Why open source

By choosing an open source product, the user obtains a number of advantages compared to commercial products. Besides the fact that open source is always available for free, it is a transparent application, in that you are invited exclusively behind the scenes to view all source code and thereby to suggest improvements to the product. Furthermore, every product is covered by a large dedicated network, or community, who is more than willing to answer any questions, you may

Find open source alternatives to your favorite commercial products. Browse through our software categories and compare pros and cons of both commercial products as well as open source software.

Why open source
By choosing an open source product, the user obtains a number of advantages compared to commercial products. Besides the fact that open source is always available for free, it is a transparent application, in that you are invited exclusively behind the scenes to view all source code and thereby to suggest improvements to the product. Furthermore, every product is covered by a large dedicated network, or community, who is more than willing to answer any questions, you may have.

osalt.com

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