Four short links: 29 July 2009

1. Bioweathermap -- crowdsourcing the gathering of environmental samples for DNA sequencing to study the changing distribution of microbial life. Another George Church project. (via timoreilly at Twitter)
2. We Are All African Now -- a great article about our genetic history and the computational genomics that makes it possible. (via Tim Bray)
3. Standing Out In The Crowd -- OSCON keynote by Kirrily Robert on women in open source. Excellent.
4. Energy Harvesting Powers Printed LED -- an interesting combination of two emerging technologies. Like an RFID, the circuit has a current induced by the presence of a changing RF field. The EL display and the RFID circuit are printed in organic compounds, whereas the power control is built with traditional circuit fabrication techniques. (via Freaklabs)

OSCON: Standing Out in the Crowd

Kirrily Robert gave the first keynote speech this morning, entitled "Standing Out in the Crowd." She spoke about the gender imbalance in open source and shared her experiences working on open source projects that have a higher-than-average percentage of women participants. She laid out statistics about the current gender balance of various projects, looked at trends in open source, and closed with a number of tips on how open source projects can get -- and keep -- more women contributors.

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