Monthly Archives: April 2005

Privacy, what’s that?

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A Whole Lotta Nothing: Strange, Troubling Privacy. OK, I’m officially freaked out. Even though I knew this was coming a long time ago. Hmmmm… who do I want to do background checks on? Hmmmmmm….

Technology brings the cost of so many things down to the average Joe. Including being outright evil.

There should be a law that you are informed whenever a background check takes place on you – so that you are aware of potential evil coming your way.

And yes, no doubt about it – this is evil.

Speaking of evil, The MIT Guide to lockpicking looks like it can come in handy someday. Heh.

Debt slavery

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That’s just what Congress and the Senate have agreed is OK for Americans who have suffered serious illness, unemployment and other calamities. House Passes Bankruptcy Bill; Overhaul Now Awaits President’s Signature (NYTimes).

Compassionate conservatives indeed. The spineless Democrats that joined them should be ashamed of themselves.

Oh, I forgot, there is no such thing as shame anymore is there?

Google becomes a media company

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Google’s new video service, that allows you to upload, share, and sell your own works, sounds like a powerful tool, not only for professional video producers, but for hobbiests, bloggers, and more. Google gets to become a media company with the content produced by users of its service.

As always, there is a discussion at Metafilter worth checking out.

I think folks should be contrasting and comparing this to OurMedia.org another video distribution service, but one with vastly different terms of service and copyright requirements.

Serious props for Philly Future

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This is a duplicate of what I posted at PF this morning

Jay Rosen calls for a new crew to shake up discussions on citizen’s journalism and includes yours truely. I’m blown away and very flattered. After all, I’m not sure I could go to these panels – unless I could take you all with me 🙂

To repeat a point I made in his discussion thread:

We are seeing the onset of a real tipping point: the technological barriers to trying out efforts along these lines have come down to where hobbyists, those that want to experiment, and those with a passion they need to satisfy, can do so with little expense or expertise.

Bryght, for example, can make available to anyone with $39.95 a month the very same communication/publishing capabilities as Philly Future. Bryght provides you with a version of Drupal that is similar to what Philly Future runs (CivicSpace). Roland Tanglao, their “Chief Blogging Officer” calls these sites Web 2.0 sites.

I’d duplicate Jay Rosen’s linkage to the other great sites and people he mentioned here, but I need to be off to work! (I will do so later)

Until then read his article and browse those sites! The discussion is important. Those other sites are trailblazers that you should know about. I’m honored that we are mentioned among them.