We're just hours away from the archiving of this place, and I find it's hard to believe this day is finally upon us.

On the one hand, it seems like only yesterday I announced the beginning of the transition period, yet here we are on the eve of functionality being removed. How did time fly by so quickly?

As I reflect back on the 1,162 days that omidyar.net has been open, I'm still amazed at the caliber of people who've participated here, be it one day for a few short hours or every day for hours on end.

This experience has been life-changing for me, and from the contents of many PMs I've received in the last month, for many of you, too.

Thanks, again, to each of you for the contributions you've made here, for the inspiration you've taken from here and for the forthcoming good things you'll do in places that are not here.

I wish you all the greatest success in your endeavors, wherever and whatever they may be. The world is changing for the better because of you.

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you did not do than those you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. Give yourself away to the sea of life.

-- Mark Twain

Great to see this young man, William Kamkwamba in Malawi, blog about his experience creating his own windmill generator.

His latest entry details a recent upgrade, but I find his post about participating in the recent TED conference to be most inspiring.

Great to see the good things he's making happen.

Passing along a recruiting request from a colleague on the Global Fund's Online Communications Team. They've got eight web-related vacancies (see them here) for their Geneva office but are most interested in filling the following jobs:

• Web Designer/Developer: Looking for an outstanding Web Designer with proven expertise in developing dynamic Flash applications (Action Script), advanced knowledge of AJAX, etc. Deadline: 14 June.
• Online Communications Officer: this is for someone (bilingual English/French – Spanish would be a plus) who has extensive experience in radio journalism and advanced skills in interviewing techniques. The selected candidate will produce weekly podcasts on the progress of Global Fund-supported programs around the world. Deadline: 14 June.
• Three Online Facilitators (Geneva-based consultants – deadline for applications: 7 June): Three people who will moderate, manage and provide general support to the members of the MyGlobalFund community in English, French, Spanish and Russian (each facilitator needs to be fluent in English and one of the 3 other languages).

Details for each of the above, plus how to apply are on this page.

Great to see Kris has just posted the positions we're currently hiring for here at Omidyar Network:

/on/open positions at Omidyar Network.

While the current positions (Investment Analyst and Portfolio Analyst) are local hires, be sure to add the page to your watch list to see as more positions open up.

Got an email from omidyar.net member BJ Fogg showing off a new widget that his company, YackPack, has created. The widget turns a web page into a live audio talk room (your computer has to have a microphone and speakers to take advantage of the feature).

Using the .. raw:: html directive (indenting any html code by one space so that it gets read as html), you can embed a widget of your own on any omidyar.net workspace page, or at the top of a discussion. If you look at the plaintext version of this post, you can copy and paste the code yourself. Look for the prompts in the plaintext code as to where to start and end the cutting and pasting.

If you embed one of these widgets in a page here on omidyar.net, please create a link to it in a comment below so we can try out audio talk rooms.

Even now I'm still amazed by how much emotion, consideration, wonder and inspiration are evoked by looking at a single photograph. Looking at just a smattering of the World Press Photo Award winners this morning is an easy reminder of the power of pictures.

The World Press Photo Awards is a contest open to professional photographers, newspapers, magazines and photo agencies all over the world. Over 78,000 pictures were submitted and the final list was culled to just 83 pictures.

From the Digital Journalist:

The World Press Photo of the Year Award for 2006 went to Spencer Platt, an American with the Getty Images photo agency. His picture, taken on August 15, 2006, shows a group of young Lebanese driving through a partially destroyed neighborhood in Beirut after a recent bombing by Israel and immediately after the cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah.

See the Digital Journalist's introduction to a gallery of 16 finalists here and view the slideshow, or just jump straight to the thumbnails if you're impatient.

If you want to see all 83 award winners, just visit the World Press Photo home page and follow the prompts.

I've been experimenting with a new "personal page" widget called Pageflakes, and I'm rather impressed at how I can control what content arrives where on my page. I can subscribe to the pre-packaged RSS feeds or I can create a page that displays whatever RSS feed I care to subscribe to.

I can also create multiple pages and pick and choose which ones I want to share with others, either a select group or the public at large.

detail image of sample page described below. Click the pic to go there

Using the RSS feeds available here on omidyar.net, I created this omidyar.net feeds page that anyone, anywhere can browse . For demonstration effect, I simply chose some group discussion feeds and a specific discussion's feed to display on the page. I also threw in the podcast for NPR's hourly news to show you can add podcasts to your Pageflake, and I threw in the world time clock flake as an example of an existing flake (there are 100s available already)

In the left column, I've demonstrated some of the display features for a given RSS feed:

• You can select how many feed items to display, from 1 to 20.
• You can choose whether to have a description of the feed or not.
• You can even specify whether or not you want the tool tip to appear (hover your cursor over the item to get a lookahead view at the feed contents)

In the Pageflakes interface, I can drag and drop these feed widgets across three columns, knowing that the left column will always display the most info.

So, as you can see, this is a quick way to track the discussions of groups you're interested in. For those wanting to see what it's like to navigate omidyar.net sans feedback scores, this one way to do it, too. There's still links back into omidyar.net so you can contribute to discussions you're interested in.

If not for my RSS aggregator allowing me to navigate content while I'm offline, I'd be sorely tempted to give it up altogether in favor of using Pageflakes to manage my feeds. Have others been using Pageflakes? How's the experience for you?

I've been digesting the argument put forth in the Salon article by Tim Harford called The economic case against charity.

Harford starts out with a disclaimer...

Selfishness is one of those issues where economists seem to see the world differently. It's not that economists are incapable of imagining—or even modeling—altruism. They can, but they usually don't. And there's a good reason for that: People aren't selfless.

So, we know that the case that follows against charity is as seen through an economist's eyes.

The whole "people aren't selfless" assertion is something I can mental get comfortable with because I personally think that folks are full of self and are motivated to do things, based on their sense of self, that are in the interest of their self. In other words, they do things in their own self-interest. When this self-interest is aligned with making the world a better place, you've got a winning combination.

So, I got to thinking about my own charitable habits and whether or not I see an economic case for it, based on the arguments in the article. Many years ago, I stopped giving all my charitable dollars to a single organization and instead have a set amount that I spread around to cover my varied interests in making the world a better place.

According to the article, this is the most selfish way to be charitable:

Even the way we choose to dole out cash betrays our true motives. Someone with $100 to give away and a world full of worthy causes should choose the worthiest and write the check. We don't. Instead, we give $5 for a LiveStrong bracelet, pledge $25 to Save the Children, another $25 to AIDS research, and so on. But $25 is not going to find a cure for AIDS. Either it's the best cause and deserves the entire $100, or it's not and some other cause does. The scattershot approach simply proves that we're more interested in feeling good than doing good.

I'm going to have to think about whether I'm going to change my ways. Do I focus everything I give on a single cause? or do I continue to scatter my charity so as to feel good but not do as much good?

This feels like a rhetorical question at the moment.

Realizing it's a deeply personal question, I wonder how do others decide how to be charitable? Is it all resources to one cause? or scattershot like me?

I'm at the Online Community Summit and am participating in the Online Collaboration for Social Good session. Lots of great examples (I will provide links in the comments of this discussion later), but this is the example I choose to lead with:

It's an ingenious design on this remembrance home page. I like how it really drives the message home and transports us back to what things used to be like here in the US mere decades ago.

Given the options, which link do you choose first? If you're like me, you and can't help but click on both of them. I deliberately disobeyed and chose the link on the right.

Back in Boston, for the Identity Mashup Conference this time.

Thankfully, it's not as miserably rainy as last time I was here for the Beyond Broadcast conference in May. Whoever's ordering the weather around these parts exchanged the raindrops of May for heat and humidity instead (90s + high humidity today). Since we're indoors, no real impact. Like the rain, it keeps people focused within the walls instead of wandering outside (at least physically).

I'm interested in today's conference for a couple reasons. One is a better understanding of how the notion of persistent identity is being tackled on a technical level. The other is the social/psychological aspect of managing multiple identities across various contexts and what happens if/when those segregated identities are aggregated (voluntarily or not).

The Cool Conference Tool (so far) is Attendr. Great to see how folks are connected and to signal who it is you want to meet.