Alaska Senator Ted—The Internet Is A Series Of Tubes—Stevens (mockingly so, listen) returned to find the FBI and IRS searching his Alaska home.
The Reconstruction of New Orleans
It wasn’t until after my presentation that I had a chance to see the city. And I have to admit it was so depressing that I’ve been having trouble writing about it. I have a sick interest in abandoned theme parks and the like, but seeing the neighborhoods of all classes so destroyed, the symbols […] » about 200 words
Keen Says I’m Killing Culture, Byte By Byte
Andrew Keen‘s The Cult of the Amateur; How Today’s Internet Is Killing Our Culture is getting a lot of attention from usually quiet corners of the web, and I’ve had to quell the urge to write a story under the headline “Andrew Keen Tells YouTubers to Eat Spinach.” Keen’s argument rests on the belief that […] » about 300 words
Flag Day
The US flag with all its stripes and a few of its stars was adopted by a resolution of the Second Continental Congress in 1777. But today, overpriced textbooks and underpaid schoolteachers have sanitized most of our history and hidden the early controversies while fluffing half-truths, leaving us unclear about what that flag really stands […] » about 300 words
The neocons were right, so far…
The neocons were right so far: civil war is erupting throughout the middle east and Iran is feeding the flames. Is this really what we (or anybody) wanted?
queasy stomach
Bush gets queasy stomach when facing other world leaders at G8. The poor fellow is being shamed by his peers.
Biofuel: Good Idea, Bad Practice
Yes, gas prices are high, and gas doesn’t grow on trees (well, in geologic time it does), but that doesn’t mean that it’s a good idea to run on cars on corn, even if it does grow on, um, trees (yes, alright, cornstalks). I mean, people talk about photovoltaics being inefficient, but wow, think of […] » about 1300 words
Student Gets Restraining Order Over Facebook Photo
The Associated Press reports a composite nude posted to facebook has earned a UNH student a restraining order:
A University of New Hampshire student got a temporary restraining order against another student who combined an image of her face with an explicit photo of another woman’s body, then posted the composite on his Facebook page.
A judge ordered Owen Sanborn, of Laconia, to stay at least 100 feet away from the woman and barred him from posting her “likeness or name on any Internet site,” pending a final hearing.
The woman’s lawyer, Bryan Gould, said the posting was the latest episode in a series. Social networking sites like Facebook can encourage stalking-type behavior, he said.
“It’s sort of a way for someone like this to sort of test the waters, and that’s what makes it dangerous,” Gould said.
Google To Psyc Profile Users!?!
There it is in The Guardian: Internet giant Google has drawn up plans to compile psychological profiles of millions of web users by covertly monitoring the way they play online games. Yep, “do no evil” Google has filed a patent on the process of building psychological profiles of its users for sale to advertisers. Details […] » about 400 words
Customer Relations Done Right
Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir is one of my favorite photographers on Flickr. Her photos are amazing, and it’s clear a lot of people agree. That’s the easy part. Then two problems arose: First Rebekka discovered that somebody was selling her photos for profit, and she posted about it. The community was shocked, and angry. And then, and […] » about 600 words
It’s Not About Technology, Stupid
Inside Higher Ed asks Are College Students Techno Idiots? Slashdot summarized it this way: Are college students techno idiots? Despite the inflammatory headline, Inside Higher Ed asks an interesting question. The article refers to a recent study by ETS, which analyzed results from 6,300 students who took its ICT Literacy Assessment. The findings show that […] » about 300 words
Awkward Moments In Social Software
We all know social networking may be a feature, not an application, but one person’s feature can become another’s bane. So when Netflix offers a handy Friends feature that makes it easy to share your viewing history and recommendations, it opens itself up not only to the value of social interaction, but also the awkwardness […] » about 300 words
David Halberstam On Competition
Speaking at UC Berkeley’s School of Journalism last month, David Halberstam struck the chord of competition journalists must struggle with. As a newspaper man who started at the smallest newspaper in Mississippi and worked his way up to the New York Times, where he won a Pulitzer for his reporting on the Vietnam War, he […] » about 300 words
Remixability vs. Business Self Interest vs. Libraries and the Public Good
I’ve been talking a lot about remixability lately, but Nat Torkington just pointed out that the web services and APIs from commercial organizations aren’t as infrastructural as we might think. Offering the example of Amazon suing Alexaholic (for remixing Alexa’s data), he tells us that APIs are not “a commons of goodies to be built […] » about 400 words
Boris Yeltsin: The Most Colorful, Drunk Politician Since Churchill
Sure, Clinton played his sax on TV, Bush groped Angela Merkel, but Boris Yeltsin gave speeches drunk, tossed women into the water, danced on stage, and generally did all manner of laughable things. But he also turned back a hardline coup by jumping atop a tank and dragged Russia kicking and screaming toward democracy. Not […] » about 300 words
Claims of Prior Art In Verizon/Vonage Patent Infringement Case
Vonage has been saying Verizon’s patent claims are overly broad for some time, but now people have dug up some prior art. One of the patents Verizon is complaining about is #6,104,711, what they call an “enhanced internet domain name server.” In short, it’s all about linking phone numbers to IP numbers, and Jeff Pulver […] » about 300 words
The High Cost Of Innovation: Vonage’s Patent Woes
Vonage will be in court again tomorrow defending itself against Verizon’s claims of patent infringement. The innovative VoIP company had lost the trial and was ordered to pay $58 Million in damages in early March, when a jury found them to have violated thee of seven related patents held by Verizon. Vonage appealed of course, […] » about 300 words
MoveOn: We Can’t Afford Bad Song Parodies
In yet another lesson about how a bad joke in front of one audience can trouble a larger public, MoveOn wants McCain to know bombing Iran is no laughing matter.
Music and bombing, it could be said, really only go well together when joined in criticism.
Is The Moller Skycar A Fraud? Will I Ever Get My Flying Car?
A recent comment here reminded me to check in on our options for flying cars, now at least seven years overdue. It turns out that Moller International, the folks developing the M400 Skycar aerodyne, are accepting deposits: As a result of the recent successful hovering flights of the M400 Skycar, Moller International is accepting deposits […] » about 400 words
Twitter Twitter Anti-Twitter
My own feelings about Twitter have gone back and forth across indecision street for a while, and despite a moment of excitement it’s still not part of my life-kit. So I was amused to see Blyberg pointing out Kathy Sierra’s poo-poo-ing of Twitter. Ironically, services like Twitter are simultaneously leaving some people with a feeling […] » about 200 words
“Smart Networks” Are A Stupid-Bad Idea
This story in MIT Technology Review scares me. Instead of letting all computers within the network communicate freely, Ethane is designed so that communication privileges within the network have to be explicitly set; that way, only those activities deemed safe are permitted. “With hindsight, it’s a very obvious thing to do,” McKeown says. No matter […] » about 600 words
NYT Struggles To Find Young Audience, Online Audience, Audience
The New York Times last week announced that it’s giving away TimesSelect to students and faculty that hold a .edu email address. TimesSelect, of course, is the paid access site that debuted in January 2006 to a confused and critical web. Editor and Publisher repeated the Times’ claim that they’re doing this for the good […] » about 200 words
Spam Getting More Personal?
The Viagra and Cialis knock-offs being pushed in so much of the spam I get may be directed at things the recipients feel very personally about, but the message itself has never been personal. Well, it had never seemed personal to me, anyway, until now. Clay Shirky pointed out what I’ve started to see, and […] » about 500 words
Damn Daylight Saving Doesn’t Save
NPR covered it like an eclipse or astronomic curiosity, and did little to question the claimed energy saving benefits. But, as Michael Downing asks in Spring Forward, how can something understood by so few be done by so many? And why go through this twice annual madness? Supposedly, we subject ourselves to the rule of […] » about 300 words
Firecrackers For Troops
Via NPR this morning: A Michigan man strapped more than 13,000 firecrackers onto himself, and lit the fuse. John Fletcher publicized it as an effort to support U.S. troops. It was an event to collect cell phones for soldiers. The Daily Press and Argus, in Livingston County, Mich., shows Fletcher standing calmly as the firecrackers […] » about 100 words