It has been a pretty hectic summer. I moved across the country for school. I quit my job. I have been traveling a little bit. I check by every now and then to make sure that everything is still running smoothly. I am happy to see that money is still being raised and donated due to this site. I am a little behind on my donations, but plan to make good in the near future. I am having trouble accessing my email, so I haven’t been able to check messages that people have sent me. I will try to update more often to let you know about things that are going on. Unfortunately, I haven’t (and probably won’t for the foreseeable future) had time to roll out some of the features I wanted to. If someone has programming experience and would like to volunteer their time to improve the site, feel free to get in touch with me. I hope everyone has had an enjoyable summer and I hope everyone is well.

Marc

As I am sure a lot of you recognize, I haven’t been active in the past month or so. I have been extremely busy with work and graduate school endeavors. I have a lot of the new site done with, but haven’t had the time to complete it and let you guys play around with it. I am happy to see the site still alive and members still showing their support and donating to worthy charities.

I know all of the visitors to this site have kind hearts, so it goes without saying that most of you know about the horrible disasters that have struck both Myanmar and China. Now is a time to help international charities in any way you can… whether through Vote4Cause or not. I heard a story on the radio this morning about UNICEF trying to get money to rebuild schools in Myanmar. The point is that it would provide some semblance of a return to normalcy to the population that is suffering in the wake of the disaster there.

I hope everyone can take a moment to donate whatever they can. For more information, visit the Red Cross or UNICEF.

Marc

Marc

I am alive. Sorry I haven’t made any announcements recently. I have been extremely busy with non-web related things. I have signed up for a new server, but I haven’t transferred Vote4Cause over yet. I have spent what time I have learning a lot about running a web server and learning new programming languages that will allow me to create a more robust Vote4Cause site for everyone to enjoy. Of course, learning these things and providing application overhauls take time and I don’t have a bunch of that right now. However, I haven’t abandoned this and I do plan on making improvements soon.

I want to address 2 concerns that seem to come up a lot.
1) The colorful avatars: As most of you know, I removed these because they were creating a strain on the server. Without getting too technical, they won’t be feasible to bring back even with the new server without some moderate coding work. I need to make a system where you choose one and then save it to the database without having them generate on the fly (how I was doing it - very easy to implement but a huge resource hog). The new overhaul I am working on will allow you to upload your own image that will be used to identify you.

2) The voting times: The voting waiting times have changed significantly (as have many things) since the site started back in November. This has acutely been due to the server strain, but also is related to what this site really is about. I go back and forth and get different opinions on the matter (of course, you are all free to make a case for one way or the other). While I love that people spend more time on Vote4Cause with the shorter waiting times, that wasn’t my intention when I set it up that way. It sort of evolved into a site where you chat and vote. It is more fun that way, but it lends itself to having just a couple of runaway winners each round… the ones that have dedicated voters. In lieu of shorter voting times, the other option is to look at an extreme like voting once a day. Then the votes become really valuable and competition each round will be more even. Recruiting a friend to vote once will mean a lot, where now those votes carry little impact. Of course, the downside is that it is boring for the dedicated supporters. So where I am leaning right now is moving away from 5 minutes. Only because it seems to be too long for the dedicated bunch to have fun chatting, but too short where the votes still aren’t that close. I will likely make the voting period even longer. I know I will get a lot of flak for this, but the site is doing its job even with the 5 minute breaks. What I mean is that money and awareness is being raised. As of this writing, the Fistula Foundation has raised $330 from a lot of the very generous and kind visitors to this site. It is something that I appreciate and I am sure many of you reading this appreciate too. This is money that wasn’t being raised before. Of course, I would like to hear what people think about the logic behind lengthening the time.

By the way, Larkia brought up the idea of creating a chat channel that I could embed into the site. This would be a more robust chat option right out of the box and would allow you to see who is online and voting in real time.

Marc

I’m headed up to SF for the weekend. I have received a bunch of e-mails recently that I haven’t responded to yet, but I have read them all. Thank you to everyone that is supporting Vote4Cause and contributing to the Vote4Cause winners. There’s still plenty of time left in the Dian Fossey pledge drive. If you haven’t pledged, please consider doing so. It is really a great organization! Have a great weekend!

Marc

Q: Is the USO an agency of the United States Government?

A: The USO is chartered by Congress as a nonprofit, charitable corporation. Not a part of the U.S. Government, the USO relies on donations from individuals, organizations and corporations to support its programs. The USO is endorsed by the President of the United States and the Department of Defense. Each President has been the Honorary Chairman of the USO since its inception. For more information and history on the USO, please click here.

The Vote4Cause status is one of continual development. I do this very part-time, although I really wish I had more time to work on it. I am happy to see people meeting each other and being passionate about different causes. I made a couple of changes to mitigate further chaos/crashes in the near future. One was removing the avatars. The other is extending the waiting period for votes to 5 minutes. Both of these will provide less of a strain on the site for now. Some of the timing problems this last round had to do with the daylight savings time change. I made a quick fix, but apparently it didn’t do what I intended it to do. I will try to look into it more. Things seem reasonably stable now and faster because the avatars aren’t being generated anymore. Of course, if you are running into problems or notice strange things, feel free to let me know. I think my time available for this site will be better used to build it from the ground up with a different framework, which is what I have started doing recently. It will not only make the site more stable, but will allow me to implement new features more easily and will be a more enjoyable experience for everyone.

Thank you everyone for your feedback!

Animals Asia Foundation is a Hong Kong-based government-registered animal welfare charity founded by Jill Robinson MBE in 1998. It also has charitable status in UK, USA, Germany and Australia with donations being tax-deductible in these countries. It has additional offices in China.

The mission of the Animals Asia Foundation is to improve the lives of all animals in Asia, end cruelty and restore respect for animals Asia-wide. The Animals Asia Foundation, managed by professionals, resident in Asia, is committed to forging constructive solutions to the seemingly insurmountable problems which the animals face in today’s changing environment. Implementation is through a dynamic three-pronged approach:

Investigation: Using the latest veterinary techniques, animal care and conservation science, our network of field officers target countries in Asia, identifying local needs and finding solutions for the animals.

Negotiation: Cultivating sensitive communication and cooperation with governments to open the door to visionary win-win solutions.

Education: Creating inspired grass roots programmes within the community, which spark far reaching change in people’s attitudes, thus motivating them to co-exist peacefully with animals.

AAF Projects:

• China Bear Rescue
• Friends….or Food? Dog and Cat Eating
• Doctor Dog
• Professor Paws
• Project Asia

Official Animals Asia Foundation Website

BAN is the world’s only organization focused on confronting the global environmental injustice and economic inefficiency of toxic trade (toxic wastes, products and technologies) and its devastating impacts. Working at the nexus of human rights and environment, we confront the issues of environmental justice at a macro level, preventing disproportionate and unsustainable dumping of the world’s toxic waste and pollution on our global village’s poorest residents. At the same time we actively promote sustainable and just solutions to our consumption and waste crises — banning waste trade, while promoting green, toxic free and democratic design of consumer products.

BAN is named for the Basel Convention, a multilateral environmental agreement, which in 1994 passed a landmark decision to reverse this deadly trend and ban the export of hazardous waste for any reason from rich to poorer countries. The Basel Ban Amendment is a clear unabashed trade barrier erected for the environment, and for human rights, supported by developing countries in recognition of the present disparate economic playing fields that, if exploited, will shift pollution problems to those least able to deal with them, rather than solve them at their source. Part of BAN’s mission is to protect this groundbreaking, precedent-setting decision from attack by industry and free-trade zealots that now see the Ban Amendment as a threat to globalization-as-usual.

BAN Photo Gallery: See photos of workers in Guiyu, China and Lagos, Africa processing hazardous electronic waste, such as computers, monitors, and TV’s, which are often imported from the United States and other rich countries. Though not pictured, this is happening in other poor countries as well, such as India. Unfortunately much of the imported electronic equipment cannot be repaired and is instead dumped and often burned near rivers or canals or dumped into them. Electronics are full of hundreds of toxic and often carcinogenic chemicals and even more are created when they are burned. The workers work without any gloves, eye, or respiratory protection often with barefoot children nearby or even helping. The “recycling” or processing of e-waste in this manner is very harmful to both health and the environment. The groundwater in Guiyu is completely contaminated to the point where fresh water is trucked in constantly for drinking purposes.

BAN has produced two groundbreaking films. The first film was “Exporting Harm: The Hi-Tech Trashing of Asia”. The second film is The Digital Dump: Exporting Re-Use and Abuse to Africa. This is the trailer only. BAN was also featured in National Geographic Magazine in January 2008: High-Tech Trash: Will your discarded TV end up in a ditch in Ghana?

When recycling your electronics please make sure that the recycler recycles responsibly and does not ship overseas! And let others know about this issue. Here is a link from BAN to find a responsible e-cycler. Also you may want to find out how your country stands on international toxics.

Official Basel Action Network Website