Sunday, March 17, 2013
Nope, Flickr’s hashtags aren’t news eitherWSJ was wrong to pretend potential Facebook hashtags are news, and everyone reporting about a similar move by Flickr is just as wrong. What makes this even less news is that Flickr has so far only started calling their longtime tags feature …Saturday, March 16, 2013
Prenda Law’s dismissing some cases following ID theft claimThis stuff just gets better and better. It feels like Lady Justice Herself is suddenly trolling the trolls.Friday, March 15, 2013
Google+ lead asks for advice from Google Reader fansGoogle+ architect Yontan Zunger meant well, but Google+ will never be sufficient as a reader. Brands maintain a curated presence there for audience outreach and building purposes, not to provide readers with a convenient way to determine what …Friday, March 15, 2013
Porn troll Prenda Law angers judge with shady behaviorEarlier this week I mentioned that the EFF was going to represent a couple of anti-trolling websites in a case brought by porno copyright troll Prenda Law. The Ars Technica article by Megan Geuss is well-written and really conveys the absurdity …Friday, March 15, 2013
Transitioning from Google Reader to feedlyFrom the Feedly blog: We have been working on a project called Normandy which is a feedly clone of the Google Reader API – running on Google App Engine. When Google Reader shuts down, feedly will seamlessly transition to the Normandy back end. So if you are …Thursday, March 14, 2013
Dear Wall Street Journal: Why is Facebook’s hashtag implementation news?I love that this is “news” at the Wall Street Journal. Perhaps the only news-worthy aspect of this story is that it’s one of those rare instances where Facebook is the one keeping up with the Joneses, instead of the other …Thursday, March 14, 2013
Whitson Gordon finally figured out EvernoteI’m not being snarky: he writes at Lifehacker about how he never “got” Evernote, until recently. It’s a great article and I can say I’ve made at least some use of every technique Gordon discusses. The most important? Use Evernote all the time, for …Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Powering Down Google ReaderI don’t even know what to say about this. Reader is an integral part of my workflow and I need to figure something else out. If you have any alternatives to suggest, please let me know.Wednesday, March 13, 2013
The Evening Edition PodcastEvening Edition is a wonderful way to catch up on news that doesn’t include a Kardashian or an Apple rumor. Now, they offer a five-minute daily podcast featuring the stories of the day. I tried reading Evening Edition via their email newsletter, RSS, and the website …Tuesday, March 12, 2013
EFF will represent targets of copyright troll Prenda LawCopyright trolls sue lots of people to extract settlements from those who can’t afford to litigate in the face of potentially massive statutory damages. Their claims are often facially lacking in merit and instead leverage intimidation and …Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Harvard snooped on faculty emailIf you’re composing an email you don’t want someone to see, consider picking up the phone instead. Your assumptions about the privacy of email are inaccurate.Thursday, March 7, 2013
My goal was simple: I wanted to export all of the tracks I’ve listened and stored in my Last.fm account. I don’t have any real experience working with APIs, but thanks to Jeroen Baert’s post, which I found via this StackExchange thread, I found a handy Python script that even a newb can run. The …Thursday, March 7, 2013
ECPA amendment would require warrant even for email older than 6 monthsReps. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), Ted Poe (R-Texas), and Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.) are pushing an amendment to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act that would require a warrant for authorities to obtain any email, instead of …Wednesday, March 6, 2013
This is probably so awesome to me because only recently have I dusted off my Reddit account and started using the internet’s greatest link-sharing site in earnest. Reddit is divided into “subreddits.” These are topic-based, like /r/Gaming and /r/Tumblr. It allows the growth of communities based on …Monday, March 4, 2013
Twitter kills TweetDeck, announces it on Posterous, which they’re also killingI admit, squeezing the entire post into the title is lazy, but at least it’s informative. I’ll link to Twitter’s death notice for Posterous and call it a post.Thursday, February 28, 2013
Google’s answer to AirPlay comes to YouTube for iOS, sends video to consoles and TVsI’ve been doing this from my Galaxy Nexus for a while now. I paired my phone to my Xbox 360 so I can pull videos up on my phone’s YouTube app (which is much easier to use than the Xbox app) and then send to my …Monday, February 25, 2013
Yahoo nixing work-from-home arrangementsI was hoping Marisa Mayer would bring Yahoo1 into the twenty-first century. This is one piece of evidence that tips the scales very far in the opposite direction, and will probably cost Yahoo a few good employees. No, I don’t put the “!” at the end of Yahoo. …Sunday, February 24, 2013
Twitter kills my favorite Twitter app for AndroidIn August, Twitter turned its back on the sort of independent developers who built their community for them. Now, my favorite Twitter app for Android, Falcon Pro, has hit Twitter’s artificial user limit. They have other apps, (like an incredible …Saturday, February 23, 2013
Facebook is buying your loyalty card historyCotton Delo of Ad Age: The targeting would hypothetically enable Coca-Cola to target to teenagers who’ve bought soda in the last month, or Pampers to show ads to North Carolina residents who’ve recently bought baby products, since Facebook’s own array of …Monday, February 11, 2013
Evernote CEO hints at future task management integrationPhil Libin, CEO of Evernote, talking to Lifehacker: What’s your favorite to-do list manager? You know, I don’t actually have one. I use Evernote, which isn’t particularly great for to-dos yet. Yet. Despite having tried every task management …Wednesday, February 6, 2013
Zombie Law SchoolsGerard Magliocca of Concurring Opinions introduces a fresh take on the legal education topic.Sunday, February 3, 2013
CBS “Streisanding” itself among courts with CNET debacleCBS’s strong-arming of CNET on this front has the exact opposite of the intended effect: now that it is clear how much control CBS has and is willing to exert over CNET content, any reasonable court must consider the possibility …Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Streaming music: good for fans, bad for musiciansThe numbers are pretty stark, and while it doesn’t hurt to be available on streaming services, if for nothing else than the opportunity to be found by new listeners, unknown artists are better off leveraging social media and sites like Bandcamp to …Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Apple store trade dressI wonder if there are any retail stores out there that have looked like Apple stores since before Apple stores, and before this trademark was granted earlier this month. I don’t mean knock-off stores, though. I’m thinking make-up shops, art galleries, and other entities that …Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Antigua responds to US gambling ban with government-backed infringement planThe Carribean nation Antigua and Barbuda and the World Trade Organization say a US ban on online gambling is costing jobs and “billions of dollars.” The WTO has approved a plan to allow infringement of US-based copyright …Wednesday, January 30, 2013
128 GB iPad perfect for pros?I still personally have no interest in a 128 GB iPad, but as John Gruber points out, some professionals prefer the tablet form factor generally, and the iPad specifically, but run out of space for the multimedia they use every day.Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Confessions of a Liberal Gun OwnerNovelist Justin Cronin presents a very well-written and reasonable take on why knee-jerk reactions on either side of the gun debate are misinformed and unrealistic: […] in the weeks since Newtown, I’ve watched my Facebook feed, which is dominated by my coastal …Tuesday, January 29, 2013
At Google, Constitution trumps statuteDavid Kravets quotes a Googler: “Google requires an ECPA search warrant for contents of Gmail and other services based on the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which prevents unreasonable search and seizure,” Chris Gaither, a Google spokesman, said. The …Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Veganism as religious beliefI must admit that I never thought about it in that light, but I’d love to read the plaintiff’s essay.Tuesday, January 29, 2013
The 128 GB iPad is official……but I’m not interested. Peter Cohen of The Loop shared this earlier today, but I wonder why he didn’t offer any of his own thoughts on it. Here’s why I’m not interested: Part of the iPad’s appeal to me is that it isn’t another crufty “filing cabinet.” I rather …