Saturday, August 25, 2012
Securing the legacy of the world’s greatest geekNew Scientist's Jacob Aron interviewed Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal fame, whose latest endeavor is the financing and creation of a museum dedicate to Nikola Tesla’s work. A random piece of trivia that caught my eye: He actually built an …Friday, August 24, 2012
Cloud startup aims to make “dumb” cell phones smartSean Gallagher reports at Ars Technica on biNu, a company developing an asynchronous, server-side smartphone emulator in Java. The system’s low-bandwidth, high-security nature makes it a perfect fit for countries where the next iPhone is out of …Friday, August 24, 2012
Microsoft’s Election 2012 hub on Xbox Live heralds the interactive TV futureSamit Sarkar, reporting at The Verge: The interactive element of the hub is a live polling system. It will gather impressions from Xbox Live users as they watch live broadcasts of the three scheduled presidential …Friday, August 24, 2012
[Longread] Scamworld: ‘Get rich quick’ schemes mutate into an online monsterThis article by Joseph L. Flatley at The Verge is a feat of modern reporting and storytelling. Do yourself a favor and watch the associated documentary, too. I like to give everything a “link” / “longread” …Thursday, August 23, 2012
What Successful People Do With The First Hour Of Their Work DayKevin Purdy, formerly of Lifehacker fame, shares the morning strategies of several people in this Fast Company article. I have never liked the empty proclamations of Tony Robbins and his ilk, but the rest of the article is interesting.Thursday, August 23, 2012
Tent - the decentralized social webTent is decentralized, not federated or centralized. Any Tent server can connect to any other Tent server. All features are available to any server as first-class citizens. Anyone can host their own Tent server. Tent servers can also be run as Tor hidden services …Thursday, August 23, 2012
Longread: Brand as Context in Interaction DesignBen Fullerton of Method, writing in UX Magazine on the interplay between user experience design and brand messaging: For designers, the development of a compelling brand helps to round out the design, creating a before and after. It builds a …Wednesday, August 22, 2012
What are some things I’d be shocked to learn about the outside world?Susan Wu, on Quora: All products inherit the values of their creators and have a sort of corresponding ‘morality.’ When you create an algorithm, it’s optimizing for something — it might be that you think “saving time” is a …Tuesday, August 21, 2012
You are listening to PhiladelphiaListen to a mashup of ambient noise recordings from your city (via Soundcloud) and local police scanners. Thanks to Geekadelphia for posting about this.Tuesday, August 21, 2012
A Vision for the Future of Newspapers—20 Years AgoMark Potts, writing about his major part in what might be properly called the genesis of the first digital publishing strategy: As someone said when they saw PostCard a few years later, “It looks like the Web.” Except that, in those early days of …Saturday, August 18, 2012
Changes coming in Version 1.1 of the Twitter APITwitter’s Michael Sippey posted an update at their Developers Blog yesterday announcing that the company will: essentially be crippling many of the third-party apps that got the company where it is today; and severely bloating and degrading the user …Saturday, August 18, 2012
How to Save the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily NewsJoel Mathis, writing at Philadelphia Magazine‘s blog The Philly Post, may have a point. But going online-only would require a serious modernization of the Philly.com brand and site design. I don’t see the ownership having the vision to …Saturday, August 18, 2012
Philly Geek AwardsThis happens on Friday, August 17, 2012. I. can’t. wait.Saturday, August 18, 2012
HP’s webOS group spun out into new company: GRAMDerek Kessler of webOS Nation wrote this up yesterday. His post included an internal email to employees of the new company, “GRAM.” It was very evasive, vague, and noncomittal for a internal email, but this part bothered me: Be the culture. Spread our …Saturday, August 18, 2012
Boom Makes Your Mac Speakers Go Up To 11If you’ve ever wanted your Mac to be louder (as I often did before buying this app), Boom is worth the money. Here’s a direct link to the App Store.Saturday, August 18, 2012
Longread: Prosecutorial Indiscretion | Secrets Of An Independent CounselDavid Gran, in 1998 in The New Republic, reprinted online by PBS: Whereas most prosecutors must discriminate between cases–to decide, say, whether to spend their time and money pursuing people who drive over the speed limit or …Saturday, August 18, 2012
Obama to NASA: I want to know about Martians right awayPresident Obama, speaking to NASA’s Curiosity team (as quoted by CNET‘s Chris Matyszczyk): If, in fact, you do make contact with Martians, please let me know right away. I’ve got a lot of other things on my plate, but I suspect that that would …Saturday, August 18, 2012
Interactive Martian Panorama from Curiosity RoverIf you read Boing Boing, you’ve already seen this. But I had to share it just in case. A fellow named Andrew Bodrov used Curiosity’s recent 360-panoramic photo collection to construct this interactive image, a la Google Street View.Saturday, August 18, 2012
Blog Post Cited in a Ninth Circuit OpinionMr. Eugene Volokh congratulates my former copyright law professor David Post of Temple Law on having a blog post of his cited in a 9th Circuit opinion (PDF).Saturday, August 18, 2012
Fareed Zakaria Apologizes for ‘Lapse’; Faces Time and CNN SuspensionsI would be honored to work for Time, CNN, The Atlantic, or The New Yorker. While I may require some on-the-job journalism training, I will absolutely do my own work 100% percent of the time.Saturday, August 18, 2012
FTC OKs Facebook’s privacy settlementTony Romm, writing at Politico: The order means Facebook must now obtain consent before sharing a user’s information with advertisers or others in a way that differs from their current privacy settings, and it bars Facebook from again misrepresenting its privacy …Saturday, August 18, 2012
Apple sold 5.7 million tablets in the U.S. last quarter, court documents show. Samsung sold 37,000Philip Elmer-DeWitt’s article at Fortune is one of many today about the revelations coming out of the Apple v. Samsung trial. But his headline is the main reason I had to share this link. It must feel …Saturday, August 18, 2012
Pulse Comes To The WebFrederic Lardinois, writing at TechCrunch: The web app, says Pulse, is “designed for discovery” and while it’s still a very visual experience, Pulse did away with the row layout it uses in its mobile apps. Instead, your list of sources is now on the left and stories appear in …Saturday, August 18, 2012
Philadelphia newspapers CEO’s message to employeesJim Romenesko, quoting the letter from Bob Hall, CEO at Interstate General Media, which owns Philly’s major papers: We must produce products that reflect the needs of our readers, viewers, advertisers and future prospective customers. This is …Saturday, August 18, 2012
U.S. will not challenge computer fraud case to high courtThe Computer Fraud and Abuse Act prohibits, among other things, accessing a computer without authorization or in excess of authorization. Employers have been known to use it against employees where the latter has used a company database to …Saturday, August 18, 2012
Managing Email RealisticallyI’m not sure all of Matt Gemmell’s advice would work for me, but it’s well worth reading. It’s especially handy for people who don’t care for formalistic productivity methods like GTD.Saturday, August 18, 2012
Flame and Stuxnet Cousin Targets Lebanese Bank Customers, Carries Mysterious PayloadKim Zetter, writing at Wired: The researchers don’t know if the attackers used the bank component in Gauss simply to spy on account transactions, or to steal money from targets. But given that the malware was almost …Saturday, August 18, 2012
Only crazy people don’t use Facebook?Zoe Fox, writing at Mashable: Employers may suspect that an applicant’s absence from the social network means the account is so full of offensive material that it had to be deleted. But what if I deleted my Facebook account because my friends’ accounts …Saturday, August 18, 2012
Apple’s Secrets Revealed at TrialIan Sherr, writing for the Wall Street Journal: In cross-examination, Mr. Forstall said Eddy Cue, now head of Apple’s Internet services efforts, had used a 7-inch Samsung tablet for a time, and sent an email to Chief Executive Tim Cook that he believed “there …Saturday, August 18, 2012
Does Cybercrime Really Cost $1 Trillion?A spokeswoman for Senator Joe Lieberman, speaking to Peter Maass and Megha Rajagopalan of Mother Jones: Senator Lieberman and his staff believe that McAfee, Symantec, and General Alexander are reputable sources of information about cybersecurity. The …