In 2007, the issue was the environment. In 2008, the theme is poverty.

By coordinating the efforts of many bloggers (more than 10,000 different sites, as of this morning), the organizers hope to galvanize improvement in the lots of the world’s poor. As measured by the World Bank, substantial improvements have been made since the 1980s.

Even so, one quarter of the world continues to subsist on less than $1.25/day.

Here’s what you can do to help:

• Participate in the One Laptop Per Child project (OLPC). Just head over to laptopgiving.org.
• Tune in to BlogTalkRadio’s 12-hour Blog Action Day talkathon to discover how dozens of prominent bloggers and technologists will be helping in the effort.
• Support microlending efforts at Kiva.org. Learn more about microcredit, Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank in this Business Week article, “Can Technology Eliminate Poverty?
• Read WebTeacher’s post describing a social business to find out how this form of concerned commerce works.
• Donate to or participate in the development of the technologies described at PracticalAction.org. These include micro-hydro plants, small-scale wind generators, affordable solar lanterns and biogas plants.
• Learn more in online poverty resources listed on BlogActionDay.org.

Spread the word!

Mozilla’s user experience guru, Mike Beltzner, took the time to demonstrate some of Firefox 3′s best features in this detailed screencast, embedded below.

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Note: This screencast won’t scale to size, so it may look misformatted on this blog. Try the link above if the overhang is just too hard on your design sensibilities.

[@Firefox Answers]

If you want to add to the record, check out the world record page at SpreadFirefox.com, pledge to download the app and then head over to the Mozilla homepage and download Firefox. More than 1.655 million people have already made a pledge worldwide.

If you just can’t wait, Digital Inspiration has blogged that Firefox 3 is available on on Mozilla’s FTP and Web servers. Here are the paths:

• FTP Mirror: ftp://mozilla.isc.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/3.0/win32/en-US/
• HTTP (Win): http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-3.0&os=win&%20lang=en-US
• HTTP (Mac): http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-3.0&os=osx〈=en-US

Keep in mind, however, that if you download the application from the FTP mirror, it may not count for the record. And really, can’t you wait a few hours more?

Happy World Download Day!

Enterprise 2.0 is the strategic integration of Web 2.0 technologies into an enterprise’s intranet, extranet and business processes. Enterprise 2.0 implementations generally use a combination of social software and collaborative technologies like blogs, RSS, social bookmarking, social networking and wikis. Most enterprise 2.0 technologies, whether homegrown, free or purchased, emphasize employee, partner and consumer collaboration. Such technologies may be in-house or Web-based. Companies using YouTube for vlogging or a private Facebook group as a modified intranet, for instance, are implementing a form of enterprise 2.0.

The conference organizers have formulated the following definition, loosely based upon Harvard Business School professor Andrew McAffee’s definition for enterprise 2.0:

Enterprise 2.0 is the term for the technologies and business practices that liberate the workforce from the constraints of legacy communication and productivity tools like email. It provides business managers with access to the right information at the right time through a web of inter-connected applications, services and devices. Enterprise 2.0 makes accessible the collective intelligence of many, translating to a huge competitive advantage in the form of increased innovation, productivity and agility.

So what’s the story? Buzzword akin to Web 2.0 or something “real?”

In a session exploring the state of Enterprise 2.0, however, Dion Hinchliffe offered up one of the best, most succinct definitions to date that moves beyond the specifics to a more overarching purpose:

Enterprise/Web 2.0 is made up of “networked applications that explicitly leverage network effects.” — Tim O’Reilly.

In this case, a network effect is “When a good or service has more value the more that other people have it too.” (Wikipedia)

Here at the conference, over 60 different vendors are demonstrated different kinds of communication and productivity software that creates such network effects by helping workers to collaborate more easily, efficiently and socially. We’ll be posting videos, articles, interviews and other content over the next two days, as long as the wifi allows. Livestreaming has been balky, due to heavy network use, but you can check in on WhatIs.com’s live conference coverage of Enterprise 2.0 at uStream.com to see if we’re online. Check back here for more coverage on cloud computing, Dan Bricklin on SocialText’s new social spreadsheet or demonstrations of new social software like Newsgator’s Social Sites 2.0, a plugin that turns MSFT Sharepoint Server into a Facebook-like environment.

If you’re at the conference floor and would like to demonstrate your software or talk about enterprise 2.0 and social software, feel free to email me at ahoward@techtarget.com or send me a tweet at @digiphile on Twitter.

How can you work with structured data in an unstructured way?

He noted that the killer app of the PC generation that came of age in the 1980s was the spreadsheet, pioneered by Dan Bricklin in the form of VisiCalc. That app was what led many early adopters to buy an Apple and tap into the productivity gains brokered by the IT revolution.

Spreadsheets are now used for communication, lists, tables and two-dimensional layout. Mayfield asserted that they’re the most common database on the planet.

Workers collaborated originally by using sneakernet and floppy disks to share spreadsheets.

Now, we play “email volleyball with attachments” — a descriptive and all too accurate summation of how files ping pong around a network, introducing version control issues, 90% error rates. As Ross sees it, reverse engineering a spreadsheet on a web page misses the potential.

For the past two years, Socialtext has been working with Dan Bricklin to combine the usability and collaborative power of a wiki with the organization and flexibility of a spreadsheet. Meet the social spreadsheet, a “multi-user wiki-based spreadsheet program that simplifies version control, reduces errors and increases productivity.”

The software is able to cross organizational, structural, geographical and temporal boundaries. In the short video below, (available on Viddler for sharing or on YouTube), Dan Bricklin explains what a social spreadsheet is, how it works, how he was involved in the project and what users can expect from the software.

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The social spreadsheet is open sourced and will be used in XOs for the One Laptop Per Child project worldwide, providing access to a quintessential IT tool for farmers, village merchants, businessmen, teachers and thousands of other individuals in the developing world.

Thanks again to Dan Bricklin for taking the time to talk to WhatIs.com.

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The video was produced by the Computer History Museum.

[Hat tip to Linux Journal, via Greg Laden]

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Learn how to add codecs automatically, play video embedded in a browser and how to install a Flash Player plugin or the Miro video platform.

In the sequence embedded below, filmed, the founding father of open source software answers a series of questions. This interview was originally posted at MasterNewMedia.org in 2006 and features commentary and links from Robin Good.

Q: What is free software?
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Q: What are the negative consequences of using proprietary software instead of free software?
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Q: What free software do you recommend using?
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Q: Can individuals and organizations use GNU/Linux in their daily operations?
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Q: What can individuals do to support the open source movement?
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This screencast is from Ubuntu.com and was created by Alan Pope.

There has been a lot of talk about open source hardware lately and its potential effects on research and education. ETech 2008 showcased many examples of open hardware and offered an insightful presentation [PDF] to those who are new to the emerging technology. Likewise, popular sites like Slashdot and bloggers like Scobleizer have been discussing the growing movement.

The increasing popularity of open source software has already had a tremendous influence on education and the world as a whole. Not only are many schools now making the switch to open source programs, leading universities like UC Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon are involved with developing large open source software projects.

However, we have yet to see open hardware really take off. Ryan Singel of Wired feels that 2008 could be the year and I second that opinion. Leading the pack seems to be open source robotics, which has been embraced by several major universities.

Just last month, Willow Garage’s Steve Cousins gave a keynote speech at ETech 2008 about open source personal robots, which has brought more attention to the subject. Willow Garage is a privately funded lab that experiments with various robotics platforms.

This open source robotics movement can be felt on many college campuses as well. Carnegie Mellon, which I previously stated is involved with open source software, is also building OS personal robots. The university has recently formed a joint project called the Institute for Personal Robots in Education (IPRE).

The IPRE is a joint project between Georgia Tech and Bryn Mawr College, with sponsorship provided by Microsoft Research. Its purpose is to help advance robotics research and computer science education. The IPRE is currently selling open source robot kits, which are geared toward educators and can be integrated with computer education curricula.

Instructions can be found RobotEducation.org if you are interested in building your own educational robot.

[Image credit: RobotEducation.org]