Actually, it's not our data at all
Actually, it’s not our data at all
It may illustrate your shopping habits and your life events, but the data about what you do online and with customer loyalty cards effectively belongs to the companies that sell it. And it makes them a lot of money.
Don’t forget that.
'Babble' to consolidate Google's chat tools under one brand
‘Babble’ to consolidate Google’s chat tools under one brand
Geek.com's Russell Holly:
Google’s recent decision to block non-native XMPP requests is the first step towards building their own closed communications platform. In order to use Google’s chat service, especially the new Babble service, you’ll need to be using it the way Google wants you to use it.
This doesn’t sound very open. John Gruber of Daring Fireball has been tracking this issue for a while, most recently citing Google’s abandonment of CalDAV.
Google isn’t doing themselves any favors on the “open” front. I wouldn’t be surprised if they abandonment that mantra altogether going forward.
Prenda Law's dismissing some cases following ID theft claim
Prenda Law’s dismissing some cases following ID theft claim
This stuff just gets better and better. It feels like Lady Justice Herself is suddenly trolling the trolls.
Google+ lead asks for advice from Google Reader fans
Google+ lead asks for advice from Google Reader fans
Google+ 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 content in that brand’s firehose of updates readers may wish to read further.
Note: I cross-posted this from a comment I wrote on Google+.
Porn troll Prenda Law angers judge with shady behavior
Porn troll Prenda Law angers judge with shady behavior
Earlier 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 of the situation in which Prenda has put itself. I urge you to click the link in this post’s title to go give her piece a full read.
Also, if you’re interested in keeping up with the latest in potential troll-stomping, consider keeping an eye on the Ars series "Who’s behind Prenda Law?". They always do great work at Ars and this series is no exception.
Transitioning from Google Reader to feedly
Transitioning from Google Reader to feedly
From 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 a Google Reader user and using feedly, you are covered: the transition will be seamless.
Feedly is my top contender for a Reader replacement right now: multi-platform, ready to clone my Reader feeds, and prepared to essentially take over much of Reader’s core subscribe-and-sync functionality when Google pulls the plug.
Also, I can’t help but assume that they’re calling it Normandy because there are tens of thousands of Google Reader users suddenly storming their shores.
Dear Wall Street Journal: Why is Facebook's hashtag implementation news?
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 way around.
When will this vaunted hashtag implementation be completed? No one knows, despite WSJ's having talked to some of those ubiquitous and ever-informative “people familiar with the matter.”
What I think is really wonderful about this non-story is that it took not one but two people at WSJ to produce it, Evelyn M. Rusli and Shira Ovide. I don’t pretend to know the usual caliber of those journalists’ work, but I hope, for their sake, that the topic of this blurb is uncharacteristically dull.
Whitson Gordon finally figured out Evernote
Whitson Gordon finally figured out Evernote
I’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 everything, and it will become a powerful part of your workflow.
Powering Down Google Reader
I 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.
The Evening Edition Podcast
Evening 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 itself, but I miss a day or two each week. I have found the podcast much easier to fit into a hectic schedule. I highly recommend it.
EFF will represent targets of copyright troll Prenda Law
EFF will represent targets of copyright troll Prenda Law
Copyright 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 poorly-constructed federal copyright damages provisions to bankrupt people for profit.
I’m impressed by Wordpress’ parent company, Automattic, who refused to respond to the troll’s fishing expedition. And it’s good to see EFF lend a hand here in the form of representation, but eventually Congress needs to step in and fix the statutory damages provisions that incentivize copyright trolls to this vile abuse of our legal system in the first place.
For some great background and reporting on trolls and those who fight them, read this Ars Technica piece by Timothy B. Lee.
Harvard snooped on faculty email
Harvard snooped on faculty email
If 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.
How to Export Your Last.fm Listening History on a Mac
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 script was originally written for use in moving your Last.fm data to Libre.fm, but it works just as well as a standalone backup.
I saved lastexport.py to my home folder (the one with your Mac username) and opened up a Terminal window. Then, I just pasted the following command into the Terminal prompt and pressed Enter:
python lastexport.py -u last.fm_user_name
Make sure you replace last.fm_user_name with your own Last.fm user name. The script will store the results in a text file called exported_tracks.txt, located in your Home folder or whatever other folder you saved the script in. The data in the text file is a little messy, but it’s all there.
If you know how to make the data prettier, don’t hesitate to get in touch with me.
ECPA amendment would require warrant even for email older than 6 months
ECPA amendment would require warrant even for email older than 6 months
Reps. 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 allowing free access to messages older than six months.
I wrote in January about Google’s decision to require a warrant even where the law does not, so the ECPA’s shortcomings in the digital age (the law is more than twenty years old) are sometimes mitigated by responsible corporate policies.
But a legitimate amendment like Lofgren’s would apply Google’s common sense approach to 4th Amendment rights to all such service providers. There’s simply no excuse not to get this done.
How to Roll Your Own Multireddit
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 shared interests or disinterests.
Now all of that I knew, and you probably did, too. But what I recently found out is that you can append multiple subreddits to a URL to open them in a cocktail of sorts. So, if you want to view a mashup of Reddit entries about Philadelphia, technology, and burritos, just go to /r/philadelphia+technology+burritos.
The possibilities are endless, so use /r/Multireddit to browse what your fellow redditors have posted.
Twitter kills TweetDeck, announces it on Posterous, which they're also killing
Twitter kills TweetDeck, announces it on Posterous, which they’re also killing
I 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.