CircleCount helps you better understand Google+

2013-05-25 20:44:46 (0 comments, 2 reshares, 5 +1s)

Asus is selling a superslim notebook preloaded with Unbuntu Linux for $300.

2013-05-23 19:07:04 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

About half a dozen very interesting people have signed up for Think-Know Tools, which runs June 19 - July 26. I need another half dozen to make up a viable cohort, and registration caps at thirty. Here is the syllabus and information about price, schedule -- everything you'll need to know to decide. If you want to join us, please email me howard@rheingold.com 
http://socialmediaclassroom.com/host/think2/

2013-05-22 04:20:52 (50 comments, 6 reshares, 49 +1s)

American taxpayers have been wonderful for Apple. But that's basically a one-way street, says Harvard Business Review.

2013-05-21 01:28:17 (24 comments, 141 reshares, 155 +1s)

The Copyright Cartel has sent fraudulent takedown notices to Google, in what appears to be an attempt to stop you from finding a brilliant film about the movie studios' often-slimy campaign against the Pirate Bay. Here's my small effort to help everyone find what they want to hide. 

I rarely ask you to do this, but I'd appreciate it if you'd share this widely.

For more on the cartel's tactics, here's a short explainer from BoingBoing: http://boingboing.net/2013/05/20/movie-studios-send-fraudulent.html

2013-05-20 15:16:43 (7 comments, 4 reshares, 25 +1s)

I'm a huge admirer of what Matt Mullenweg and his team at WordPress have accomplished in the 10 years they've been working on this essential -- that is a carefully chosen word -- platform. My Guardian column this week, in the wake of Yahoo's buyout of Tumblr, explains why WordPress is so important to the Internet's future.

2013-05-18 18:31:01 (12 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

I have an #Ingress  invite. While the game looks very intriguing to me, I'm profoundly concerned about sharing my location with strangers, and if I can't be anonymous, I won't be playing the game.

If you're playing it now, would you mind sharing a little bit (spoiler free, if there are potential spoilers) about your experience? 

2013-05-16 18:45:55 (4 comments, 14 reshares, 46 +1s)

Here's why network neutrality should absolutely apply to mobile carriers, too.

2013-05-16 18:43:29 (1 comments, 8 reshares, 31 +1s)

Yet another reason to do business with Newegg.

Patent trolls have got to go.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/05/newegg-nukes-corporate-troll-alcatel-in-third-patent-appeal-win-this-year/

2013-05-16 15:42:24 (16 comments, 7 reshares, 16 +1s)

The Obama administration's outrageous raid on the phone records of the Associated Press prompted me to renew the call for journalists to take security more seriously, for the sake of their sources, themselves, and the rest of us who need to know what the rich and powerful are doing. In Slate:

2013-05-16 15:40:53 (5 comments, 3 reshares, 12 +1s)

My latest Guardian column admires Google's amazing capabilities and achievements, and hopes that hubris won't overtake the deserved self-confidence and create major trouble down the road.

2013-05-16 15:38:58 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

This week I started releasing a cycle of work that began 14 years ago when I read my first article about "open source journalism." I thought then, and still believe, that the craft of beat reporting would be changed by the discovery that, as Dan Gillmor put it in 1999, "my readers know more than I do." That, plus the frictionless ease by which information and expertise from knowledgable users could flow in would make possible a different kind of beat coverage. 

A lot has happened since I came to that conclusion 14 years ago: The rise of blogging after 2000, which changed the READ ONLY web into Read/Write. The rise of social after 2007, which changed the web into read/writer/share. The routine use of networked methods in journalism, as with finding sources over Twitter or Facebook. 

But we still haven't seen the networked beat emerge in full form yet, and thati... more »

2013-05-16 00:49:53 (6 comments, 0 reshares, 19 +1s)

Very impressed with auto-enhance in the updated G+...

2013-05-16 00:46:54 (8 comments, 4 reshares, 54 +1s)

Fog approaches San Francisco...

2013-05-15 22:52:00 (30 comments, 0 reshares, 26 +1s)

When you pick single-column view, shouldn't the column be wider than it was it was one of two columns? 

2013-05-15 22:20:12 (51 comments, 1 reshares, 35 +1s)

I prefer the old Google+.

2013-05-15 14:35:16 (16 comments, 3 reshares, 14 +1s)

ABC reporter acknowledges he didn't read the original emails on which he based a "bombshell" story that made Obama look terrible.

2013-05-15 04:05:28 (8 comments, 22 reshares, 44 +1s)

The sound you hear is the financial pillars of higher education crumbling to the ground. 

2013-05-14 12:48:45 (20 comments, 3 reshares, 20 +1s)

Wondering when it'll dawn on journalists and right-wingers that the Obama administration is incredibly hostile to civil liberties. Maybe the IRS stuff will persuade "conservatives" and maybe the AP snooping will wake up the journalists. One can hope...

2013-05-12 22:06:20 (15 comments, 1 reshares, 12 +1s)

One more way hugely profitable pro football chews up its "players", then abandons them. 

2013-05-12 16:22:38 (10 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

Ubuntu quirk: Printing boarding pass from a PDF, and everything prints except the bar code; or sometimes the code is partially printed. I'm using a Brother (MFC-7840W) printer, from Ubuntu; this happened with 12.10 and 13.04.

When I print from Windows in a VM, to the same printer, everything is fine. 

Baffling.

2013-05-11 16:14:15 (8 comments, 17 reshares, 42 +1s)

Want to increase downtown retail sales in your city? It may be as simple as putting in more protected bike lanes. 

2013-05-10 21:24:40 (26 comments, 26 reshares, 44 +1s)

Adobe is inviting its customers to say "NO EFFING WAY" to its new Creative Cloud -- just check out the absurdly restrictive and one-sided terms of service. I wouldn't agree to this under any circumstances. 

2013-05-10 19:09:29 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

My latest in the Guardian: How biz-model moves at Google and Adobe are part of ecosystem shifts.

2013-05-10 18:46:56 (19 comments, 8 reshares, 26 +1s)

Apple and Google can unlock your supposedly secure mobile devices for the police. This means your device is insecure, period. I guarantee that there are criminals who will exploit whatever holes or backdoors these companies have built into the software.

2013-05-10 01:01:14 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

I'm excited about the launch of MediaShift's first e-books, in partnership with +PBS!

http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/e-books

2013-05-10 00:10:24 (7 comments, 7 reshares, 15 +1s)

Help pay for a court stenographer to capture a first-hand record of the Bradley Manning trial. A worthy new project of the Freedom of the Press Foundation:

2013-05-09 18:46:07 (1 comments, 1 reshares, 4 +1s)

Great to see +Alexander Howard's new stream of articles.

2013-05-09 17:09:47 (19 comments, 2 reshares, 13 +1s)

The Republicans in Congress have dropped all pretenses about their agenda. It's pure obstruction -- and as this story explains, ignoring the law is part of the strategy.

2013-05-08 21:20:42 (20 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

At wit's end with suspend/resume bug affecting my ThinkPad running Ubuntu (12.10 and 13.04 produce same result). Reporting the bug has gotten me nowhere. Several folks have offered ideas, but nothing seems to work. The only way I can use this computer now is to shut down every time I move it.

2013-05-07 15:31:29 (36 comments, 4 reshares, 7 +1s)

Creative types: What are best alternatives, particularly open source (apart from Gimp), to Adobe products? This is for a column...

2013-05-07 15:29:32 (8 comments, 2 reshares, 5 +1s)

You'll be shocked, shocked to learn that Hollywood kowtows to the Chinese dictators, who order up changes in content.

2013-05-06 22:54:42 (10 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

Question for Samsung Galaxy Note 2 (Sprint) owners: What's the best ROM out there? cyanogenmod doesn't seem to be coming along very fast...

2013-05-06 21:02:38 (0 comments, 4 reshares, 7 +1s)

EFF's DMCA takedown "Hall of Shame", 2013 edition: 

2013-05-06 18:49:33 (16 comments, 4 reshares, 14 +1s)

Want to keep using Adobe "Creative Suite" software? That'll be $600 a year ($360 if you're in academia). 

2013-05-05 20:02:57 (32 comments, 13 reshares, 43 +1s)

One of the technology industry's worst aspects is the way it chews up young programmers and engineers and blackballs olders ones. Then, of course, these companies whine about a lack of qualified workers and demand much looser visa standards.

I'm strongly in favor of more immigration. But the industry's hypocrisy is pretty rank.

2013-05-03 16:41:15 (0 comments, 8 reshares, 23 +1s)

    In Celebration of Day Against DRM
    Save 50% on 5000+ Ebooks & Videos
    (Save 60% on orders over $100)

   Having the ability to download files at your convenience,
   store them on all your devices, or share them with a friend
   or colleague as you would a print book is liberating, and is
   how it should be. This is a critical moment in the fight against
   DRM. A proposal currently being considered by the W3C would
   weave DRM into HTML5 - in other words, into the very fabric of
   the Web.

   Ebooks from oreilly.com are DRM-free. You get free lifetime
   access, multiple file formats, free updates.

   Use discount code: DRM2013 - Deal expires May 3, 2012 at
   11:59pm PT and cannot be combined with other offers.

    http://oreil.ly/DRM-FREE-2013

#DRM   #OReilly   #OReillyMedi... more »

2013-05-03 16:35:48 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

Change of pace in my latest column for the Guardian: Warren Buffett represents the best and -- rarely, thank goodness -- the worst of capitalism. 

2013-05-02 22:53:30 (2 comments, 1 reshares, 15 +1s)

The NCAA isn't just corrupt and evil. It's institutionally stupid, too. 

2013-05-02 22:12:19 (19 comments, 1 reshares, 8 +1s)

My new column on a 1st Amenment suit that could take away public employee unions' political clout

2013-05-01 22:13:56 (13 comments, 2 reshares, 22 +1s)

Read the transcript of Obama's press conference yesterday, and you'll see why the Washington press corps has made itself so irrelevant. A random group of Twitter or G+ users -- or, for that matter, a collection of people off the street -- would have asked better, more relevant questions than these.

2013-05-01 17:21:38 (0 comments, 3 reshares, 9 +1s)

0.o ... Okay, so let's take this apart:
1- Props for reporting what many have known for a long time, it needs repeated exposure until they all get the message;
2- Really, +WIRED? It let's "Hackers" do this!? *smh*
3- Tridium, or should I say +Honeywell, you should be ashamed of yourself for making such statement...
"...company said it believed attacks on its systems were unlikely because the systems were obscure and hackers didn't traditionally target such systems."
I wish there was a Darwin Award for corporations, because Tridium would be nominated.
#InfoSec   #Fail  

2013-05-01 16:48:35 (27 comments, 1 reshares, 10 +1s)

Ubuntu really dumbed down the file manager in 13.04. What are the best replacements?

Update: I'm giving dolphin a try. A little retro in its look, but it does everything I want.

2013-05-01 22:11:08 (258 comments, 126 reshares, 382 +1s)

Obama is naming an insider to head the FCC -- an insider who at one time or another has represented just about all of the interests aligned against an open Internet. Sad but unsurprising from this president.

UPDATE: I wish I'd been policing the comments better. Some of this stuff is just lunatic. Apologies to regular followers.

2013-04-30 04:16:49 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

Our +BlogHer community had a LOT to say about this article, so +Lisa Stone +Jory Des Jardins and I decided to weigh in with our perspective. We decided to think about the greater context of what happens at other events. And of how women who blog generally feel about coverage of our industry.

And we took a rather unusual tack for us. So, enjoy.

2013-05-03 05:09:43 (31 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

Well, updating to Ubuntu 13.04 hasn't fixed my suspend-resume situation on my ThinkPad T430s. In fact, it's worsened. At this point, if I want to move the laptop with the lid closed I have to shut it down entirely, or at least half the time have to do a hard reset. The frustrating part is this worked perfectly until a few weeks ago, long after I'd installed 12.10. Hugely frustrating, and time-wasting.

Update: The good advice below has (at least temporarily) fixed this. I did two things:

1. Turned off Wake on LAN in the BIOS.
2. Installed Intel's latest graphics drivers (from here: https://01.org/linuxgraphics/downloads). 

Since then I've suspended 3 times with no trouble. Fingers crossed...

Further update: No such luck. The bug is still there. Very frustrated at this point.

2013-04-29 02:58:36 (1 comments, 1 reshares, 3 +1s)

Bay Area folks: Please join us for a conversation about the Banyan Project, aiming to create a cooperative model for journalism -- tomorrow (Monday) evening in San Francisco. 

2013-04-29 02:39:25 (7 comments, 26 reshares, 50 +1s)

Go download this documentary, which was created by our government and by any rational standard should be in the public domain. Even by the insane standards of our copyright laws, this is beyond the pale.

2013-04-27 02:50:17 (2 comments, 1 reshares, 15 +1s)

My new blog post on Google's Transparency Report.  Is Google doing enough to resist governments that try to delete search results? 

2013-04-27 02:49:27 (4 comments, 2 reshares, 3 +1s)

Bay Area folks: Please join us Monday evening for conversation about a fascinating new journalism idea, the Banyan Project. It hopes to bring the cooperative model to a field that needs new funding methods. I'm an advisor. 

The invite is below; more on the project at http://banyanproject.coop -- 

2013-04-26 21:13:19 (7 comments, 4 reshares, 19 +1s)

Talking Points Memo explains how the Democrats let the complaints of the "traveling class" turn into an abject surrender to the Republicans on sequestration. The Democrats are spineless and unprincipled, as usual.