Disaster recovery and business continuity plans typically occupy either the bottom draw and are years out of date, or exist in some ideal day after tomorrow. But as our systems have become extremely complex and interdependent, they are exposed to more potential disruiptions.

Last month Sydney CBD was thrown into chaos at rush hour by an errant backhoe and since March 30 the city has had three further partial blackouts. NZ can't gloat either with recurring blackouts in Auckland recently and more predicted for this winter as elderly systems come under stress. But sometimes the problem can be even more local. 

When a contractor wielding an angle grinder accidentally cut into the air-conditioning cooling system of a downtown Auckland office block, thousands of litres of water poured through 11 floors of office space.

The mishap forced some businesses in the high-rise to evacuate while the mess was cleaned up. [Read more →]

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for all its differences and idiosyncrasies, development, marketing, executive and volunteer staff should feel encouraged about the Internet: the same basic principles of fundraising apply. 

The network for Good resource distills the problem down to 5 major points We’re Forgetting When We Take Our Fundraising Online [Read more →]

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Today's Facebook community find — learn2sign NZSL!:

Welcome! learn2sign is for anyone who wants to have a go learning New Zealand’s third official language, New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL). …

Mission:

To promote the teaching and learning of New Zealand Sign Language.

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Everybody knows that social networking is popular with the younger set. But every generalisation has its exceptions — meet Ivy Bean, 102 years old:

Ivy Bean is a great-grandmother with a difference. At 102 years old she has joined the social networking revolution and become the oldest person on Facebook.

The former mill worker, who was born in Bradford in 1905, showed an interest in the website, after hearing care workers at her home talk about the phenomenon.

… The world has changed radically during Ivy's lifetime. When she was born … telegrams were the fastest way of communicating and a national telephone network was still seven years away. Ivy would have to wait 46 years until the first computer was invented.

… Care home manager Pat Wright said: 'We try to keep all our residents independent by letting them use the computer.'

[Via : Meet Ivy Bean - the world's oldest Facebooker aged 102 | Mail Online.]

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While the Internet has been around for decades, the web is only around 15 years old.

A decade ago anyone suggesting that we'd all have instant access to vast stores of information, or satellite images of the planet, or near real-time photos from an event half a world away, for free, from a device we hold easily in one hand would have been thought a wild dreamer. Today it's just reality.

We use laptop computers, large and tiny, cellphones, games machines, home computers, to connect to the Internet, sharing text, sounds and images instantly with billions of others.

All that in 15 years. But what's next? What will we be doing in another 15 years? People often talk about what may happen next year, or even, at a stretch, the year after that, but Kevin Kelly stretches his mind , and ours, with a longer view:

At the 2007 EG conference, Kevin Kelly shares a fun stat: The World Wide Web, as we know it, is only 5,000 days old. Now, Kelly asks, how can we predict what's coming in the next 5,000 days?

Download his 20 minute talk from Kevin Kelly on the next 5,000 days of the web | Video on TED.com to find out what he sees in our future. The talk is around 70Mb, so you need broadband.

He offers interesting, and challenging, ideas. What do you think of what he suggests?

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