- SOPA/PIPA blackout | MetaTalk
Another story about what it's like to get a bogus takedown letter. 2 weeks of work and stress, without getting compensation from the party that caused the work and stress.
- Takedown Hall of Shame | Electronic Frontier Foundation
Just in case you're thinking that this SOPA business is a fuss over nothing, than that it is what its supporters say it is – an act targeting pirates and criminals, and that it won't hurt the average innocent internet user – here is a link to a page collating the worst abuses of the existing law in this area, the DCMA, which is what companies currently use to require takedowns of infringing material. Take a look at the list of companies who have used the existing law in a way that was never intended.
Tag: twitter
Bookmarks for November 14, 2011
- Danielle Sucher › Jailbreak the Patriarchy: my first Chrome extension
A Chrome plugin that does its best to gender-swap the internet. For some it'll be eye opening. For some, it'' raise blood pressure. For others, it might even lower it. In any event, it's an interesting experience – go play.
- Sycorax: Bring Fictional Characters to Life on Twitter
Yes, I can see uses for this that would massively enhance a present-day tech based game, or just because it looks like a fun little narrative engine.
Bookmarks for June 13, 2011
- Infovore » Where’s @towerbridge?
The lovely bot that tweeted the activity of Tower Bridge has been killed, and with it, the very, very pleasing history of its activity over the last few years. Come on twitter, you can do better than this.
Bookmarks for March 13, 2011
- Twitter tells third-party devs to stop making Twitter client apps
I would almost certainly not be using twitter today were it not for Twitterific. Regardless of the commerical thinking behind it, even if it turns out to be good for users in the long run, right now, this feels like a dick move, to use the vernacular. Will be interested to see the fall out from this.
Bookmarks for December 6, 2010
- Lady Gaga, Kim Kardashian’s Digital Death Not Moving People – DesignTAXI.com
On the one hand: I'm sorry that the fundraising hasn't been as as successful as they hoped, because it is a good cause, on the other, surely a child of six might have thought that while people *like* having celebrity drivel as part of their Twitter/Farcebook experience, it's not something people would actively *miss* if it went away – whichever marketroid through the campaign up is clearly not very good at their job, especially as the campaign ensures it's own silence – they can't remind people that they're not there in order to drive donations without violating their pledge. (No, I'm not donating via said campaign. Show me a cause where I can get celebrities to stop Twittering/Facebooking for good by pledging, and I'll get the chequebook out.)
- Falling out of love (Phil Gyford’s website)
More grist to my mill in re: getting rid of books as physical objects: cheap POD books, which is where we're heading for book-as-physical-object (unless you want current bestsellers, which I almost never do) tend to be shoddier things. A good POD book is just as good as a regular book, but I've seen some very shoddy examples in the past, where I would definitely rather have had the ebook.
Bookmarks for September 28, 2010
- IMac 2000 vs iPhone 2010
I'm not posting this as an Apple fan – Apple are a long, long way from being the only example of this kind pace of technology, and probably aren't even the best. But they're a well know, very recognisable one. As you look at this though, I invite you to consider the following: you didn't even notice that change happening, did you?
- Now Shipping: ThinkUp Beta 1 | Smarterware
Need to grab this and get it running somewhere – on the one hand, most of my stuff is inconsequential crap, on the other hand, I don't like not having my own copy of data I generate, so something that auto-archives my socialmeeja crap is handy, especially if it'll let me produce stats on it.
- Lessons of the Chewbacca Incident « Binary Bonsai
Some data on the behaviour of users who were referred by to a site, split by the site that referred them – for example, users referred by BoingBoing stay longer, but read less extra pages that this initial linked one than those who arrive via Bleeding Cool or io9. I'd be cautious of putting reading *too* much into the data, but it's still interesting.
Bookmarks for September 21, 2010
- Politics of storytelling – Laurie Penny interviews China Mieville
This is food for thought. Key quote: "Storytelling is clearly an extremely important function of societies, but it's nonetheless unproven that to be human is to be a storytelling being. Even if it is the case that human beings are completely intrinsically storytelling animals, it doesn't follow that that's something to celebrate, any more than we should celebrate the fact that human beings are defecating animals."
There're a number of obvious counter-arguments, that can essentially be lumped in as "the power of art to bring about change" but it's still a point of view worth remembering.
- I was wrong about veganism. Let them eat meat (but farm it right) | George Monbiot | Comment is free | The Guardian
I think I'm going to have to pick this book up. A lot of the numbers around the environmental impact of livestock farming have seemed off to me particularly in relation to arguments about grain (because, well, what's wrong with grass-fed?) and water (because invariably, the numbers seem to assume that any water fed to a cow never leaves the cow, which is pretty self-evidently wrong). It's nice to see that someone's actually taken the numbers apart and proved them wrong/fallacious, and done so in a way that convinces even a big hippy like Monbiot.
- Alex Payne — The Very Last Thing I'll Write About Twitter
A clear and sensible statement about the need to decentralise services like Twitter, Facebook, and really, almost any service, if you want it around for the long (decade+) haul. Idle thought: Someday, someone will figure out how to massively decentralise search, and than things will get really interesting. (Google have, of course, effectively done this internally in that their search architecture is spread over cluster after cluster, but that's not the same as true decentralisation…)
- Diaspora Developer Release
I really want this to succeed – once it's out of beta, and at the more-or-less easy to install stage, I'll probably put some time and cash, into setting up a Seed. I absolutely know that there are people I've lost touch with since leaving Facebook, and I know my social life has suffered for it. I've felt quite disconnected from many of my friends this year, and it's bugging me quite a lot of late. I'm not blaming anyone, you understand and I'm not going to be one of those arseholes who think that it's everyone else's fault – I knew what I was doing when I walked away from Farcebook – I'm just a little sad that people don't seem to use any other contact medium any more. So as soon as I can, I'll help offer a better alternative…
Bookmarks for August 24, 2010
- Archipelago | URBAGRAM
Heatmaps for the city. Ten kinds of awesome.
- Setting Up Twitter Bots with OAuth
This will be useful in the near-to-medium future.
Bookmarks for June 4, 2010
- Street Giant » Leroy Stick – the man behind @BPGlobalPR
In the course of excoriating BP, a noble end in and of itself, he says this: "You know the best way to get the public to respect your brand? Have a respectable brand. Offer a great, innovative product and make responsible, ethical business decisions." To which I can simply say: Yes. This. Now please all got and read the whole piece, because it's great.
- Coins database: Government opens up books on public spending for first time | Politics | guardian.co.uk
You know, I don't think I have a spare 120GB of storage space. I may need to do something about that. In any event, this might well make things interesting over the next while, as people start digging into how much is spent where…
Bookmarks for May 17, 2010
- Tabloids Turns Twitter Into a Beautiful iPad Magazine
This looks really good. I suspect I shall want this, possibly along with a second twitter account to subscribe to news-based twitters.