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Why Every Community Should Have Its Own Geek Awards
I recently had the pleasure of attending the Second Annual Philly Geek Awards. It was an amazing experience, but far better recaps than anything I can do are already available (like here and here, so I’ll keep this to around 500 words.
Warning: May contain italics and optimism.
There were over two FIVE(! …sorry Eric!) hundred people there, representing geekdom of all types. There were scientists, foodies, comic book artists, filmmakers, comedians, web designers, indie game and app developers, and many more. The sheer diversity of geekery going on Philadelphia is amazing. But the gathering, and the award ceremony in particular, have become much more than the sum of their parts.
Last year, the first annual Philly Geek Awards proved to the City and its geeks that the Age of Geek is here to stay in Philadelphia. Geek may be the new cool when it comes to pop culture, but there is no shortage of 100% pure geek street-cred in Philly. It’s not a fashion trend (although Philly geeks clean up very well, myself included). It’s also not a boys’ club (Spoiler alert: Ms. Hightower won 2012 Geek of the Year!).
The first ceremony cemented the presence and importance of this city’s geek community.
It was refreshing.
This year, the second annual Geek Awards proved that Philly’s geeks are not satisfied merely to be recognized. They are building, connecting, and developing communities, online and off, all over Philadelphia and at an unprecedented pace. This time, it was more than refreshing:
It was inspiring.
That’s because what I saw, and what I could feel in the air, was a sense not only of like-mindedness when it comes to community and innovation, but an even stronger sense that we can, and should, work together for a better city.
I realize that by the end of that last sentence, I started to sound like a politician. Maybe that’s okay: with any luck, some of the Geek Awards attendees, or their friends, or their spouses, or their children, will become a politician, or work for one. If anyone can overcome the absurdity of politics, it’s a Philly geek.
Then there are the companies, the publications, the government partnerships, the music records, the software, and more that will come from the massive, wonderful brains of Philly’s geeks.
Enough about the future. What about today?
Every city needs such a perfect way to unite, reward, and inspire its geeks. Only recently has Philly’s true geekery started to find its way into government (a beat covered masterfully by Technically Philly). There are undoubtedly geeks across America making rage faces at their city’s website or longing to meet other geeks. Geek Awards are the answer.
The Philly Geek Awards are about what Philly’s geeks, of all types, are doing today to improve their communities, their city, and their world. It’s about people, coming together and making stuff, at art collectives, coworking spaces, and universities all over Philly, right now.
There’s nothing more inspiring than that.
You are listening to Philadelphia
You are listening to Philadelphia
Listen to a mashup of ambient noise recordings from your city (via Soundcloud) and local police scanners. Thanks to Geekadelphia for posting about this.
A Vision for the Future of Newspapers—20 Years Ago
A Vision for the Future of Newspapers—20 Years Ago
Mark 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 experimentation, the Web didn’t really exist yet.
How to Save the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News
How to Save the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News
Joel 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 invest in either branding or a design refresh, and if they do, I’m not confident they’ll pick the right people for the job. I hope I’m wrong, because the only sure thing about Philly’s major papers these days is that something needs to change fast.
HP’s webOS group spun out into new company: GRAM
HP’s webOS group spun out into new company: GRAM
Derek 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 Values: People Matter. Integrity and Trust. Deliberate Innovation. Act small, deliver big.
That is a series of bad PR poster captions strung together with no meaningful intent by HP’s Martin Risau. I hope its aimless encouragements aren’t illustrative of the kind of focus, or lack thereof, the new company will have.
webOS has deserved better than what HP has done for it from the moment their acquisition of the unique mobile OS was finalized. Hopefully, GRAM is a new, bolder, and better beginning for webOS.
Boom Makes Your Mac Speakers Go Up To 11
Boom Makes Your Mac Speakers Go Up To 11
If 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.
Longread: Prosecutorial Indiscretion | Secrets Of An Independent Counsel
Longread: Prosecutorial Indiscretion | Secrets Of An Independent Counsel
David 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 mug old ladies–independent counsels have only one case, and nearly all the time and the money they need to pursue it. There is little incentive to stop investigating. And, as the investigation racks up costs, the pressure inevitably mounts to convict.
Obama to NASA: I want to know about Martians right away
Obama to NASA: I want to know about Martians right away
President 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 go to the top of the list, even if theyre just microbes.
Interactive Martian Panorama from Curiosity Rover
Interactive Martian Panorama from Curiosity Rover
If 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.
Blog Post Cited in a Ninth Circuit Opinion
Blog Post Cited in a Ninth Circuit Opinion
Mr. 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).
Fareed Zakaria Apologizes for ‘Lapse’; Faces Time and CNN Suspensions
Fareed Zakaria Apologizes for ‘Lapse’; Faces Time and CNN Suspensions
I 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.
FTC OKs Facebook’s privacy settlement
FTC OKs Facebook’s privacy settlement
Tony 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 and security practices.
This settlement will be in place for twenty years. Will Facebook still be here in twenty years?
Apple sold 5.7 million tablets in the U.S. last quarter, court documents show. Samsung sold 37,000
Apple sold 5.7 million tablets in the U.S. last quarter, court documents show. Samsung sold 37,000
Philip 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 like a punch in the gut for Samsung executives to see those numbers juxtaposed.
Portland Press Herald plagiarized a photo they didn’t even need
This is a story within a story. The outer story is about Reverend Robert Carlson, who killed himself recently amid a sexual abuse investigation. This post isn’t about that story. It’s about the inner story, about a reporter using a copyrighted photo without attribution, and claiming fair use when the photographer realizes it.
Summary: Steve Mistler of the Portland Press Herald plagiarized a photo by Audrey Slade and when she requested they take it down he told her it was fair use. I think he is wrong, his reporting was solid and didn’t require a photo, he should take the photo down, and he should apologize to Slade for plagiarizing her photo.
Steve Mistler of the Portland Press Herald used a photo taken by Audrey Slade, who worked at Husson University while Carlson was there but didn’t take the photo in her capacity as an employee. Mister didn’t request permission to use Slade’s photo, and he didn’t attribute the photo to her. He found the photo on Slade’s Flickr account, labelled as “All Rights Reserved,” and published it with this article about Carlson.
The appropriate course of action was to contact Slade either via contact information on her Flickr profile or via Flickr’s built-in messaging system. If she replied granting permission, run the photo. If she denied permission, or didn’t reply at all, don’t run the photo. Instead, the reporter used the copyrighted photo without permission and later, in an email exchange Slade published on her blog, claimed fair use.
Mistler’s failure to seek out and use Flickr’s messaging system suggests to me that he didn’t want to contact Slade.
I’m not going to write in-depth about fair use, but you can find good basic information at the U.S. Copyright Office, Standford University, and Wikipedia. The Herald's use of Slade's photo is not, in my educated opinion, fair. The newspaper is a for-profit enterprise, the copyrighted work is a photograph for which false attribution can easily be claimed, the newspaper did not transform the work in any way, and they used it in its entirety.
Ms. Slade sent some very polite messages asking them to take them down, and even offered to handle invoicing them for continued usage (by the way, I think that is wonderful, regardless of whether it would hold up in court). Mistler could have replied asking whether attribution would convince her to allow the newspaper’s continued publication of the photo on their website. Slade probably would have said no, but it would have demonstrated that Mistler was aware of his mistake. Instead, he gave Slade two justifications for his perfunctory infringement:
(1) We could not, by deadline, determine who the photo belonged to, and (2) we ultimately decided it was in the public’s interest to publish them. The story was, in essence, about the evidence that Rev. Carlson was still partaking in Husson activities for years after supposedly being told he was no longer welcome.
And the photo proved that claim, Mistler’s reasoning goes, so it had to be in the article. Except Mistler got the former President of the University to admit to the allegations in the article, a far more powerful confirmation than a plagiarized, undated photo.
That was the wrong answer, legally and ethically.
Now Slade has published the email addresses of several Herald employees (all, I think, publicly available anyway), and a commenter has posted some phone numbers (one of which is a cell phone number and likely not meant to be public).
It wasn’t my photo they used without permission as part of a for-profit enterprise, but I can say that if it was, this whole thing would be more about principle than money or the law: be authentic with readers and respectful of sources and copyright holders.
In sum, there was no fair use in this situation, and there was no need for the “unfair” use in the first place because there was real reporting behind the story. Hopefully, Mistler and the Herald will do the right thing and remove that photo, preferably adding an apology to Slade and their readers at the bottom of the article for the previous use of an unlicensed photo.
Pulse Comes To The Web
Frederic 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 a beautiful dynamic grid layout. The design is responsive, so the layout will automatically adapt itself to the size of your browser windows.
I’ve only tried it out for a few minutes, but it’s beautiful and functional, and it’ll be much easier to manage sources on the web than it is on mobile.
I cut a parenthetical in Lardinois’ headline referring to Microsoft’s part in bringing Pulse to the web. The end result certainly does look great for touchscreen devices generally, and like it fits right into the Windows 8 design aesthetic specifically.
Philadelphia newspapers CEO’s message to employees
Philadelphia newspapers CEO’s message to employees
Jim 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 essential if we are to increase the total audience that we reach and to provide the consumer superior content, whenever, however (multi-products), and in whatever format desired. It is becoming even more important to be relevant, useful and timely via the applications that are utilized by our customers.
If Hall means what he says, and is well-informed, he’ll approach people like the folks who run Technically Media—people who are connected to what 21st-century journalism is shaping up to be.
In related news, read the response of the Newspaper Guild, as posted by Philly Mag’s Victor Fiorillo, [here][blogs.phillymag.com/the_phill...](http://blogs.phillymag.com/the_philly_post/2012/08/08/28-million-cuts-proposed-philadelphia-inquirer-daily-news/.)
U.S. will not challenge computer fraud case to high court
U.S. will not challenge computer fraud case to high court
The 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 poach clients for a new venture or otherwise used proprietary company information for personal benefit and to the employer’s detriment.
The Reuters article correctly points out that many jurists look at such issues as employer/employee matters undeserving of criminal prosecution, at least to the extent that they don’t violate other laws pertaining to trade secrets, securities law, and other potentially-applicable law.
I agree: an employee’s exceeding authorized access to further goals contrary to the company’s interests, unless the information retrieved is properly considered a trade secret or otherwise is protected, should be a firing offense but not a prosecuting one.
Managing Email Realistically
I’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.