FactoryCity

Bookmarks for November 10 to November 24

Chris Messina — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 08:02:06 +0000

A bi-weekly collection of linky goodness.

Garmin | Mac OS X - Current Software, news and more

“Garmin is committed to creating a great software experience for all of our customers. This page is dedicated to keeping you up-to-date on our growing range of software made for Mac and helping you enjoy the full potential of your Garmin device.”

Tags: gps, garmin, osx, macosx, geolocation, via:mento.info

Live Piracy Map 2008

“This map shows all the piracy incidents reported by the IMB Piracy Centre in Kuala Lumpur during 2008.”

Tags: piracy, map, via:mento.info

Garmin Connect

A social network for Garmin product customers!

Tags: gps, garmin, mapping, via:mento.info

Open Radar - Community bug reports

This is brilliant. I wish I’d thought of it!

Tags: apple, apple, programming, tracking, bugs, development, radar, osx, via:mento.info

BodyTrace - Weight tracking - weight loss and bodybuilding motivation at it’s best

“A comprehensive weight tracking program that allows you to monitor your weight, follow the changes of your body and let others see your progress. Your friends and supporters will keep you going, even at the hardest times.”

Tags: selftracking, lifelogging, weight, training, via:mento.info

Obama 60 Minutes Interview: Talks National Security, Financial Crisis, First Dog (VIDEO)

“The interview covered many other topics, including national security, the financial crisis, Obama’s thoughts on Lincoln and FDR, and an update on the new First Dog.”

Tags: obama, interview, politics, via:mento.info

Yahoo’s Jerry Yang to Step Down, As a Search for New CEO Commences (AllThingsD)

“Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang will step down from his job as CEO, said sources close to the company, as soon as the board finds a replacement for him, in what sources close to the situation call a joint decision by him and the company’s directors.”

Tags: jerryyang, yahoo, via:mento.info

OpenTable’s iPhone app makes reservations a breeze

I’ve been waiting for this one.

Tags: iphone, iphone, reservations, opentable, via:mento.info

Apple brings HDCP to a new aluminum MacBook near you

Oh fuck me.

Tags: efftheriaa, copyright, copyfight, copyprotection, blu-ray, itunes, apple, via:mento.info

Digital Nomads

Digital Nomads is a community site for individuals that work or play without regard for their physical location. It is a place where they can come together to read about other digital nomads, share ideas, tips and tricks, and best practices, and read the

Tags: technology, web2.0, productivity, coworking, via:mento.info

Barnraiser - Prairie

“Prairie is a lightweight OpenID based Internet identity server. Instead of registering at every web site with different username and password combinations you use your identity server to log you in.”

Tags: openid, server, identity, via:mento.info

ConnectID: Naval gazing

After rebuking the OpenID awareness, survey, Paul asks: “Is federated identity made easier, or more difficult, when the user is expected to be aware of not only where a non-local identifier is, but also what sort it is?”

Tags: openid, identity, saml, via:mento.info

Landing sites « WordPress Plugins

“When visitors is referred to your site from a search engine, they are definitely looking for something specific - often they just roughly check the page they land on and then closes the window if what they are looking for isn’t there. Why not help them b

Tags: wordpress, wordpress, plugin, searchengine, landing, via:mento.info

WordPress-Ready Contact Form v.2.0WP - Beast-Blog.com

“This is the official page for the Secure and Accessible PHP Contact Form v.2.0WP for WordPress (versions 2.0 and later) created by Mike Jolley and Mike Cherim.”

Tags: wordpress, wordpress, contactform, contact, via:mento.info

Apple discontinues 23-inch Cinema Display | Macworld

“Apple officially discontinued its 23-inch Cinema Display on Tuesday, making way for recently announced 24-inch LED Cinema.”

Tags: apple, displays, hardware, via:mento.info

New Media Requires New Thinking on Cultural Policy (Michael Geist)

Great post on why net neutrality is an important economic — and cultural — issue.

Tags: newmedia, netneutrality, canada, via:mento.info

Code Like a Pythonista: Idiomatic Python

“In this interactive tutorial, we’ll cover many essential Python idioms and techniques in depth, adding immediately useful tools to your belt.”

Tags: programming, python, programming, development, howto, tutorial, via:mento.info

voiceofsandiego.org | San Diego’s nonprofit source of daily news, opinion and commentary.

Independent media FTW!

Tags: sandiego, news, journalism, via:mento.info

OAuth channel for WCF RESTful services - Pablo M. Cibraro (aka Cibrax)

“Alex Henderson (Aka Bittercoder) has written a pretty good OAuth library in .NET for implementing an OAuth consumer and service provider. The library is available here under a MIT license (do wherever you want with it), and it is very easy to use. Alex h

Tags: oauth, wcf, rest, .net, security, via:mento.info

Cheap, Easy Audio Transcription with Mechanical Turk - Waxy.org

“The result: my 36-minute recording was transcribed while I slept, in less than three hours, for a grand total of $15.40.

This is a fraction of the cost/time of any other transcription service online, including the Turk-driven Casting Words, though you p

Tags: transcription, audio, mechanicalturk, turk, howto, via:mento.info

LIFE photo archive hosted by Google

“Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today. Most were never published and are now available for the first time through the joint work of LIFE and Google.”

Tags: photography, photos, life, history, reference, via:mento.info

Iconfactory : Freeware : Frenzic System

“CandyBar system replacement set styled after Frenzic”

Tags: icons, icontainer, design, louiemantia, via:mento.info

Bowtie Start Pack (MacThemes Forum)

11 themes for BowTie, the iTunes controller!

Tags: themes, bowtie, itunes, via:mento.info

TapExpense

“TapExpense helps you keep a record of daily expenses. It is designed for mobile users and international travelers.”

Tags: iphone, iphoneapp, iphone, expenses, via:mento.info

Agenda | Change.gov: The Obama-Biden Transition Team

“President-elect Obama and Vice President-elect Biden have developed innovative approaches to challenge the status quo in Washington and to bring about the kind of change America needs.

The Obama Administration has a comprehensive and detailed policy age

Tags: obama, politics, agenda, government, via:mento.info

The Results of Project Icon (WordPress Blog)

The results of the survey to determine the icons for WordPress 2.7.

Tags: wordpress, icons, wordpress, design, usability, interface, contest, icon, via:mento.info

Deadline: Good things come to those who plan

“Deadline is the simplest calendar ever made. You write in plain English, and it will set up a reminder for you.

Once your appointments have been entered, you can quickly search through them based on words or dates.”

Tags: calendar, productivity, reminder, via:mento.info

Iterasi unveils bookmarklet, glimpse into potential for Web archive » Silicon Florist

Iterasi now offers saving of web pages using a bookmarklet!

Tags: iterasi, bookmarklet, bookmarking, via:mento.info

Spice up your inbox with colors and themes (Official Gmail Blog)

Gmail now supports themes…! Hot!

Tags: gmail, themes, google, theme, via:mento.info

goodsense - A green advertising network.

“HELLO, WE ARE GOODSENSE. WE ARE THE PREMIER AD NETWORK FOR REACHING CONSUMERS WHO CARE ABOUT LIVING GREEN, THE ENVIRONMENT, AND SUSTAINABILITY.
We provide advertisers with the opportunity to reach influential green consumers through well-vetted and relev

Tags: ads, advertising, adnetwork, via:mento.info

OpenCongress.org: What’s Happening In Congress? at Ryan Is Hungry

“A screencast for OpenCongress.org, an open source, collaborative website that helps citizens keep track of everything happening in Congress.”

Tags: opencongress, government, transparency, via:mento.info

Adobe Labs - Alchemy

Looks like Flash may go open source after all. About time.

Tags: flash, adobe, opensource, via:mento.info

Google Analytics Tracking for Adobe Flash - Google Analytics Tracking Code - Google Code

The Google Analytics Tracking for Adobe Flash component makes it easy for you to implement Google Analytics in your Flash-driven content. This component contains all of the functionality of the Google Analytics Javascript code, and is 100% compatible with

Tags: adobe, google, flash, analytics, via:mento.info

Heekya | What’s your story?

“Heekya is a social storytelling platform that will change the way you create, share, and discover stories. Heekya allows you to easily integrate photos, videos, audio and text to create interactive stories that can be shared with family, friends, and the

Tags: storytelling, web2.0, socialnetworking, writing, via:mento.info

Why Firefox Won’t Survive Chrome (Microsoft Watch)

“News Commentary. It’s not a question of if but when Google will cut off Mozilla’s oxygen supply.”

Tags: chrome, mozilla, firefox, browsers, microsoft, via:mento.info

Yahoo! OpenID limited testing for Simple Registration support (Yahoo! Developer Network Blog)

“Today, we are announcing the start of a limited test of the Simple Registration extension for the Yahoo! OpenID service. The Simple Registration extension allows OpenID RPs to request user profile data from the OpenID provider. Yahoo! will be providing Y

Tags: openid, sreg, yahoo, via:mento.info

YDN Forums -> OpenID General Discussion

OpenID General Discussion”/>

This is the place to give feedback and discuss Yahoo! OpenID

Tags: yahoo, openid, forum, via:mento.info

The Faces of Mechanical Turk - Waxy.org

“Last week, I started a new Turk experiment to answer two questions: what do these people look like, and how much does it cost for someone to reveal their face?”

Tags: mechanicalturk, amazon, research, mturk, andybaio, via:mento.info

Social Patterns Wiki

“The Designing Social Interfaces patterns wiki is a companion site to the book that Christian Crumlish and Erin Malone are currently writing for O’Reilly Media.

We decided to share the patterns as we write the patterns and the book to get community feedb

Tags: patterns, usability, socialsoftware, design, ux, designpatterns, via:mento.info

Track Your Push-ups With GiveMe27

Track Your Push-ups with GiveMe27
Do your push-ups. Track it. Get stronger.

Tags: pushups, selftracking, via:mento.info

Cyberscams Befriend Social Networks - BusinessWeek

“Now fraudsters may log on as your “friend.” How Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social networking sites are fighting a rise in scams”

Tags: security, socialnetworking, via:mento.info

spy :: visualizes the conversations on Twitter, Friendfeed, Flickr, Blogs and more.

“spy can listen in on the social media conversations you’re interested in. What do you want to listen for?”

Tags: twitter, spy, socialnetworking, aggregator, search, via:mento.info

CalorieKing - Diet and weight loss. Calorie Counter and more

“Control your weight or your weight will control you. At CalorieKing, our mission is to put you in charge of your weight so you can enjoy the life you choose.”

Tags: diet, health, food, nutrition, calories, fitness, weightloss, via:mento.info

Workout Programs, Exercise Routines, and Food Diary | Gyminee

“Gyminee is the premier fitness social network for detailed tracking, online accountability, and motivation. Whether you are trying to lose weight or get fit, it’s time to start taking your fitness seriously.”

Tags: fitness, health, workout, exercise, tracking, selftracking, diet, training, via:mento.info

introPLAY: Train. Compete. Achieve. PLAY together.

“introPLAY is an Athletic Performance Network where athletes train together as part of the introPLAY community. introPLAY is for both casual and committed athletes, from the weekend warrior trying to shed a few pounds to the experienced competitor trainin

Tags: fitness, competition, training, via:mento.info

Getting Things Done with “Things”: a Review by Erik Hanberg | GTD Times

Things.app is getting a lot of attention — deservedly so. Another decent review, with some suggestions for improvements.

Tags: mac, gtd, things.app, review, software, via:mento.info

AddressBookSync | Facebook Picture Synchronization with OS X Address Book

“AddressBookSync is a Mac OS X application to download Facebook profile pictures to Address Book cards. This is a handy tool to keep your contacts’ pictures updated if you have numerous Facebook friends in your Mac OS X Address Book.”

Tags: facebook, avatars, photos, macosx, via:mento.info

The Age of Conversation 2: Why Don’t They Get It? by Gavin Heaton, Drew McLellan (Book) in Business & Economics

“This book is a daring challenge to the business community. Gone are the top-down, command and control messages that held sway through the 20th Century. In are a raft of new techniques that start with listening, responding and action that set the scene fo

Tags: book, blogging, ideas, inspiration, drewmclellan, via:mento.info

24C3: Building a Hacker Space

“With the help of Design Patterns we will show you how to set up your own Hacker Space. The Design Patterns are based on more than 10 years of experience with setting up and running a Hacker Space.”

Tags: hacker, coworking, workspace, via:mento.info

Sni.ps | Know The Source

“With sni.ps, content capture and attribution as easy as click and embed. Sni.ps tracks the original source of content, whether that’s a quote, a photo, video or a flash object. You respect your sources while you share content with your readers.”

Tags: copyright, creativecommons, rel-license, licensing, via:mento.info

RunningAHEAD - Achieving goals through better information

“RunningAHEAD offers a collection of free tools to help you train effectively. There is more to a training log than just entering statistics. It should be an integral part of your training, whether you are new to running or are a seasoned pro. At a minimu

Tags: running, fitness, exercise, training, selftracking, via:mento.info

RunThere | Go!

A running community.

Tags: running, fitness, exercise, googlemaps, via:mento.info

traineo | Fitness & Weight Loss Community

Tags: fitness, training, weight, exercise, via:mento.info

Yahoo Improves Its OpenID Support - Webmonkey

“Yahoo continues to make strides to improve its OpenID implementation. Thursday it announced limited testing for Simple Registration, which supplies profile data once a user logs in with their Yahoo OpenID.”

Tags: openid, sreg, yahoo, identity, via:mento.info

Go Go Gadget OAuth Support - Webmonkey

“Passwords are a little bit more secure now that Google added OAuth support to its iGoogle Gadgets. Developers can now use their gadgets to easily grab data from OAuth-enabled APIs. Using OAuth, users do not have to give their passwords to developers. Ins

Tags: oauth, myspace, opensocial, igoogle, via:mento.info

PdbTextMateSupport 0.3

“Display source code in TextMate while debugging with pdb.

This module is used to hook up pdb, the python debugger, with TextMate, an advanced text and programming editor for Mac OS, enabling it to display the debugged source code during a pdb session.”

Tags: python, textmate, pdb, debugging, osx, programming, via:mento.info

NoiseBridge

“Noisebridge is an infrastructure provider for technical-creative projects, collaboratively run by its members. We are incorporated as a non-profit educational corporation for public benefit.”

Tags: hacking, hacklab, via:mento.info

Charlie Rose - A conversation with Lawrence Lessig

“A conversation with Lawrence Lessig about his book “Remix”, and his former colleague Barack Obama.”

Tags: copyright, lessig, interview, lawrencelessig, law, culture, via:mento.info

Lifestreaming in Obamaland | Outside the Lines - CNET News

Personally, I’m excited about a lifecasting president… but on the other hand, does it make someone who is supposed to be superhuman somehow more like us? Is that what the Palin phenomenon was all about? And is that really a good thing?

Tags: politics, lifestreaming, obama, government, via:mento.info

antrepo — Modul 300 dpi Pixel Based Font

“Modul 300 dpi Base was created for graduate thesis. This thesis presents font designs which are capable of covering what is demanded by the “digital age” and discusses the issues that need to be considered regarding the applications within this new age.”

Tags: font, type, design, via:mento.info

Keywordfinder - find the right keywords to increase search traffic and help your SEO

“Keywordfinder helps you discover very successful keywords for any topic you enter. This allows you to write page copy that makes it much easier for people on the web to find your content.”

Tags: keywords, via:mento.info

Yahoo! Browser Plus Opening Up

“Yahoo BrowserPlus, the technology platform from Yahoo that lets desktop and web applications interact, is going open source. The company announced the plans today on its blog, indicating they hope the move “will allow developers to rapidly extend the pla

Tags: opensource, yahoo, browserplus, opensource, browsers, webstandards, via:mento.info

Open Sourcing BrowserPlus: Q & A with Lloyd Hilaiel (Yahoo! Developer Network Blog)

“Lloyd Hilaiel from Yahoo’s BrowserPlus team answers some questions about how the project got started, what kept it alive, and how today we’ve announced our intent to open source this original technology, enabling open development on a platform for in-bro

Tags: yahoo, browserplus, webdevelopment, via:mento.info

Sunlight Foundation’s Fortune 535

Just how much ARE our Congresspeople worth? Apparently, quite a lot.

Tags: politics, congress, government, money, sunlightfoundation, via:mento.info

Obama CTO - Help set the priorities for the Obama administration

“Barack Obama promised to use technology to make it easier for citizens to participate in government. Our goal is to provide our country’s first Chief Technology Officer (CTO) with one example of how this might work.”

Tags: obama, politics, web2.0, technology, voting, government, via:mento.info

Politics4all - Political Social Networking, Campaigning, Debates, Blogging, Legislative Bill Tracking

“We are a socially-networked platform that allows citizens, candidates, citizens, and groups to connect and collaborate on every level of the political spectrum.”

Tags: politics, socialnetwork, campaign, organizing, cms, via:mento.info

Internet for Everyone: Internet For Everyone

InternetforEveryone.org is a national coalition of individuals, public interest and industry groups who are working together to see that the Internet continues to drive free speech, economic growth and prosperity in America. A high-speed Internet connecti

Tags: internet, activism, broadband, access, organization, digitaldivide, advocacy, via:mento.info

Coding In Paradise: Fixing the Web, Part I

“This blog post is part of a new, semi-regular series called Fixing the Web. The goal is to highlight these issues, identify potential solutions, and have a dialogue. I don’t claim to have the answers for the situation we are in. However, I do know this -

Tags: standards, javascript, webstandards, via:mento.info

ecommr: a collection of e-commerce interface and design elements

“a collection of e-commerce interface and design elements”

Tags: ecommerce, webdesign, ui, patterns, via:mento.info

The Days Are Numbered: Fatal US car collisions, 2005-2007

Fascinating visualization maps of car collisions in 2005-2007. Consider that 25-35% of accidents occur where a driver is over the legal limit… WOW.

Tags: collisions, dot, transportation, driving, crashes, visualization, graphing, via:mento.info

social bookmarking for images on vi.sualize.us

“Bookmark the pictures you like around the web.”

Tags: images, bookmarking, bookmarks, photo, via:mento.info

Open Source Food: Recipes, Food Photos & Discussion

“Amazing Recipes. Delicious Food. Beautiful Photography. Created and rated by you and fellow food-lovers from all over the world. Open Source Food is your gastronomic hub where every visit will bring inspiration and a rumbling belly.”

Tags: food, recipes, cooking, opensource, community, via:mento.info

The Wrestler (movie trailer)

“Director Darren Aronofsky presents a powerful portrait of a battered dreamer, who despite himself and the odds stacked against him, lives to be a hero once again in the only place he considers home – inside the ring. THE WRESTLER had its North American p

Tags: trailer, wrestler, film, movie, darrenaronofsky, via:mento.info

Yahoo Pipes Training: A 2 Minute Yahoo Pipes Demo at Fast Wonder Blog: Consulting, Online Communities, and Social Media

“This Yahoo Pipes demo will help you get started with Yahoo Pipes and show you what you need to know to create a basic Pipe. We use filtering for this example, since Yahoo Pipes is great at taking feeds and filtering to display only the posts that match (

Tags: yahoo, yahoopipes, tutorial, howto, via:mento.info

Amazon Web Services (AWS) Hosted Public Data Sets

“AWS Hosted Public Data Sets provide a convenient way to share, access, and use public data within your Amazon EC2 environment. Select public data sets are hosted on AWS for free as an Amazon EBS snapshot. Any Amazon EC2 customer can access this data by c

Tags: data, amazon, ec2, science, research, datasets, api, via:mento.info

Obama testing ways to use Internet to govern

Just how will Obama use the internet to govern?

Tags: obama, youtube, internet, politics, government, transparency, via:mento.info

keyboardr

Wow, this is a FAST search engine!

Tags: search, tools, searchengine, keyboard, useful, tool, via:mento.info

Twitter Blog: Meet Rael Dornfest

Rael joins Twitter, shuttering I Want Sandy and Stikkit. Interesting things should come of this, and no doubt already have.

Tags: twitter, raeldornfest, via:mento.info

Few women at top in Silicon Valley

“Women in the top rungs of California’s major corporations are a rare breed. According to a UC Davis survey, women comprised just 11 percent of directors and senior executives in the state’s 400 largest public companies. Guess which California county rank

Tags: women, technology, diversity, via:mento.info

Venezuela: Following the Local Elections Online (Global Voices Online)

“Today Venezuela is taking part in elections for mayors and governors. These elections will paint the political map between States and Municipalities aligned with President Hugo Chávez or not. These results depends largely on Chávez’ popularity and can de

Tags: twitter, hashtags, politics, venezuela, via:mento.info

Designing Social Interfaces - The Book

“This book presents a family of social web design principles and interaction patterns that we have observed and codified, thus capturing user-experience best practices and emerging social web customs for web 2.0 practitioners.”

Tags: design, interface, usability, ux, wiki, ui, via:mento.info

Treating URL Protocol Schemes as Cruft (Daring Fireball)

I had meant to mention this before, but it has pretty significant ramifications. What if browsers no longer needed “http” or “https”? What if they simply stopped showing the protocol?

Tags: iphone, iphone, apple, url, interface, ui, via:mento.info

Iconfactory Thanksgiving 2008

“Thanksgiving icons from the whole factory.”

Tags: icons, design, iconfactory, via:mento.info

TweetsGiving

“A Twitter celebration of gratitude and giving to demonstrate the power of the social web by raising $10,000 in 48 hours to build a classroom in Tanzania.”

Tags: twitter, charity, via:mento.info

CloudContacts - Make Your Business Cards Work For You

For their sake, I hope they support Portable Contacts. They’d be foolish not to.

Tags: networking, productivity, contacts, plaxo, via:mento.info

Apple posts “black friday” teaser, doesn’t divulge deals - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

“Today, visitors to Apple’s online store were greeted with an interesting teaser. “Lots of gifts, 1 day not to miss,” Apple boasts on their page regarding the after-Thanksgiving sale. According to the details Apple posted, they will not be revealing their

Tags: apple, blackfriday, shopping, via:mento.info

koornk

“koornk is your personal shouting place that lets you stay in touch with your friends via short, quick messages. It works the other way too. And all you have to do is tell your friends (and the world) what are you doing at the moment.”

Tags: microblogging, twitter, microblog, socialnetworking, via:mento.info

Vladstudio Christmas wallpaper pack

“Vladstudio designs unique artworks and photo manipulations in wallpaper format. Christmas Wallpaper Pack includes 25 wallpapers designed for 1440 x 900 screens.”

Tags: wallpaper, desktops, vladstudio, via:mento.info

Mr. Tweet -> Your Personal Networking Assistant!

Your Personal Networking Assistant!”/>

“Mr. Tweet looks through your extended network to help you build effective relationships on Twitter.”

Tags: twitter, twitter, socialnetworking, web2.0, microblogging, recommendations, via:mento.info

You Gotta Try Mr. Tweet

“Last night I happened across Mr. Tweet, a stealth startup that’s growing quickly. The site bills itself as your “personal assistant for Twitter,” but it functions as a very interesting version of Facebook’s friend finder.”

Tags: twitter, twitter, microblogging, recommendations, via:mento.info

Red Rover

“Red Rover is simple orientation software that delivers customized introductions all year long.”

Tags: facebook, introductions, recommendations, via:mento.info

Barack Obama | Change Is Coming

Tags: barackobama, change.gov, via:mento.info

InterfaceLIFT Wallpaper: Blue Bird

Tags: via:mento.info

Fluid Project

“Fluid is a community, a product, and a collection of tools created by an international team of partner academic institutions. Fluid is open source software that is focused on building commonly used pieces of functionality that easily integrate into exis

Tags: opensource, via:mento.info

Helvetireader

“Helvetireader is a userscript that pares down Google Reader to what I consider to be the essentials. It’s not going to suit how everyone uses Google Reader, so you can take the CSS and fiddle and personalise to your hearts content!”

Tags: via:mento.info

What Motivates Participants to Engage in Online Communities at Fast Wonder Blog: Consulting, Online Communities, and Social Media

“There are no easy answers to this question, and like many questions about community management, the answer depends on the situation; however, it boils down to a question of motivation. What motivates people to participate in your community?”

Tags: via:mento.info

The End of Wall Street’s Boom - National Business News - Portfolio.com

“The era that defined Wall Street is finally, officially over. Michael Lewis, who chronicled its excess in Liar’s Poker, returns to his old haunt to figure out what went wrong.”

Tags: via:mento.info

Performance Improvements for Songbird 1.0

Interesting look at many of the performance improvements coming in Songbird 1.0 and the technical explanation of techniques used to achieve them.

Tags: opensource, via:mento.info

It’s Living Room 2.0 | The New York Observer

“Boxee—the open-source software that puts the Internet on your TV—is poised to revolutionize how and what we watch. Could it reunite the family, too?”

Tags: opensource, boxee, via:mento.info

Barack Obama’s plans for the web (BBC News)

Tags: politics, via:mento.info

ScreenToaster - Free online screen recorder : create screencast, tutorials and reviews in few clicks

Record your screen in one click
No download. Compatible with Windows, Mac OS X, Linux.

Share videos on the Internet in Flash
Embed them on blogs/webpages

Tags: via:mento.info

View all my bookmarks on Ma.gnolia

StockTwits.com - NO! FAIL!! UR DOIN WRONG! NO BISCUIT!! [Flickr]

factoryjoe — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 14:12:38 -0600

factoryjoe posted a photo:

stocktwits.com/

Why YouTube should support Creative Commons now

Chris Messina — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 07:17:22 +0000

I was in Miami last week to meet with my fellow screeners from the Knight News Challenge and Jay Dedman and Ryanne Hodson, two vlogger friends whom I met through coworking, started talking about content licensing, specifically as related to President-Elect Barack Obama’s weekly address, which, if things go according to plan, will continue to be broadcast on YouTube.

The question came up: what license should Barack Obama use for his content? This, in turn, revealed a more fundamental question: why doesn’t YouTube let you pick a license for the work that you upload (and must, given the terms of the site, own the rights to in the first place)? And if this omission isn’t intentional (that is, no one decided against such a feature, it just hasn’t bubbled up in the priority queue yet), then what can be done to facilitate the adoption of Creative Commons on the site?

To date, few video sharing sites, save Blip.tv and Flickr (even if they only deal with long photos), have actually embraced Creative Commons to any appreciable degree. Ironically, of all sites, YouTube seems the most likely candidate to adopt Creative Commons, given its rampant remix and republish culture (a culture which continues to vex major movie studies and other fastidious copyright owners).

One might make the argument that, considering the history of illegally shared copyrighted material on YouTube, enabling Creative Commons would simply lead to people mislicensing work that they don’t own… but I think that’s a strawman argument that falls down in practice for a number of reasons:

First of all, all sites that enable the use of CC licenses offer the scheme as opt-in, defaulting to the traditional all rights reserved use of copyright. Enabling the choice of Creative Commons wouldn’t necessarily affect this default.
Second, unauthorized sharing of content or digital media under any license is still illegal, whether the relicensed work is licensed under Creative Commons or copyright.
Third, YouTube, and any other media sharing site, bears some responsibility for the content published on their site, and, regardless of license, reserves the right to remove any material that fails to comply completely with its Terms of Service.
Fourth, the choice of a Creative Commons license is usually a deliberate act (going back to my first point) intended to convey an intention. The value of this intention — specifically, to enable the lawful reuse and republishing of content or media by others without prior per-instance consent — is a net positive to the health of a social ecosystem insomuch as this choice enables a specific form of freedom: that is, the freedom to give away one’s work under certain, less-restrictive stipulations than the law allows, to aid in establishing a positive culture of sharing and creativity (as we’ve seen on Flickr, SoundCloud and CC Mixter).

Preventing people from choosing a more liberal license conceivably restricts expression, insomuch as it restricts an “efficient, content-enriching value chain” from forming within a legal framework. Or, because all material is currently licensed under the most restrictive regime on YouTube, every re-use of a portion of media must therefore be licensed on a per-instance basis, considerably impeding the legal reuse of other people’s work.

. . .

Now, I want to point out something interesting here… as specifically related to both this moment in time and about government ownership of media. A recently released report from the GAO on Energy Efficiency carried with it the following statement on copyright:

This is a work of the U.S. government and is not subject to copyright protection in the United States. The published product may be reproduced and distributed in its entirety without further permission from GAO. However, because this work may contain copyrighted images or other material, permission from the copyright holder may be necessary if you wish to reproduce this material separately.

Though it can’t simply put this work into the public domain because of the potential copyrighted materials embedded therein, this statement is about as close as you can get for an assembled work produced by the government.

Now consider that Obama’s weekly “radio address” is self-contained media, not contingent upon the use or reuse of any other copyrighted work. It bears considering what license (if any) should apply (keeping in mind that the government is funded by tax-payer dollars). If not the public domain, under what license should Obama’s weekly addresses be shared? Certainly not all rights reserved! — unfortunately, YouTube offers no other option and thus, regardless of what Obama or the Change.gov folks would prefer, they’re stuck with a single, monolithic licensing scheme.

Interestingly, Google, YouTube’s owner, has supported Creative Commons in the past, notably with their collaboration with Radiohead on the House of Cards open source initiative and with the licensing of the Summer of Code documentation (Yahoo has a similar project with Flickr’s hosting of the Library of Congress’ photo archive under a liberal license).

I think that it’s critical for YouTube to adopt the Creative Commons licensing scheme now, as Barack Obama begins to use the site for his weekly address, because of the powerful signal it would send, in the context of what I imagine will be a steady increase and importance of the use of social media and web video by government agencies.

Don Norman recently wrote an essay on the importance of social signifiers, and I think it underscores my point as to why this issue is pressing now. In contrast to the popular concept of “affordances” in design and design thinking, Norman writes:

A “signifier” is some sort of indicator, some signal in the physical or social world that can be interpreted meaningfully. Signifiers signify critical information, even if the signifier itself is an accidental byproduct of the world. Social signifiers are those that are relevant to social usages. Some social indicators simply are the unintended but informative result of the behavior of others.

. . .

I call any physically perceivable cue a signifier, whether it is incidental or deliberate. A social signifier is one that is either created or interpreted by people or society, signifying social activity or appropriate social behavior.

The “appropriate social behavior”, or behavior that I think Obama should model in his weekly podcasts is that of open and free licensing, introducing the world of YouTube viewers to an alternative form of licensing, that would enable them to better understand and signal to others their intent and desire to share, and to have their creative works reused, without the need to ask for permission first.

For Obama media to be offered under a CC license (with the licensed embedded in the media itself) would signal his seriousness about embracing openness, transparency and the nature of discourse on the web. It would also signify a shift towards the type of collaboration typified by Web 2.0 social sites, enabling a modern dialectic relationship between the citizenry and its government.

I believe that now is the time for this change to happen, and for YouTube to prioritize the choice of Creative Commons licensing for the entire YouTube community.

On invite-only betas

Chris Messina — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 21:22:52 +0000

Fred Wilson wrote about the value of blogging and building social capital, demonstrated by the hundred requests for invites he received on his post on his recent investment, Boxee, an invite-only service.

Now, while I find the behavior of public invite-requesting curious, I understand it.

I also think there’s another side to this equation that I’d like to point out, being one of the fortunate early adopters who happens to get invited to a lot of early alphas and betas… and that’s understanding the relationship between the creator of the beta and the testers. Or, to put it another way, requesting an invite to a service for one’s own benefit is one thing; understanding that an invite is a privilege given in exchange for feedback and suggestions provided is another. And the secret to getting early access to beta programs is, perhaps obviously, to be a good beta tester.

There are any number of ways to demonstrate that you’re worthy of an invite to an invite-only alpha or beta program. One problem is that a lot of beta feedback is submitted privately, outside of public forums. Whenever I can, I attempt to use more public forums, both for my own recollection, but also for the benefit or other testers, developers and later users.

In other cases, I’ll use Flickr or Twitter, leading to interesting phenomena, similar to what Fred describes.

In particular, I’ve been alpha testing a music player called Spotify for some time. It’s an incredible service and recently opened up with three levels of service, although it’s sadly not available in the US yet owing to licensing issues. Now, the only way to get an account with the service is to request an invitation.

It just so happens that I screenshotted an element of the new interface, uploaded it to Flickr and titled the photo “Spotify Invites“. That photo is now the second result for that phrase on Google and people have noticed, quickly exhausting my supply of invites.

The problem with this scenario, and with Fred’s, is that many folks seem eager to get access solely for their own benefit, without thought to the quid pro quo that makes beta programs successful (and ultimately benefit both the developer and subsequent users!). And I think it’s worth it to point out that beta programs aren’t just freebie give-aways: the gate is there for a reason!

I wrote this post in 2005, back when Gmail was an invite-only service (!!) and I was thinking about the relationships we were attempting to cultivate with the Flock alpha tester program:

So what of all these invite-only (or formally invite-only) services where you have to know someone on the inside to get a golden ticket? Does it artificially increase desire? Does it help services grow organically and cut down on trolls and spam, creating more value for invitees? Does it create more investment from the user community and perhaps establish even minor connections between invitor and invitee? Or does it create a false hierarchy around an inner circle of well-connected geeks?

Who knows?

What I do know is that it’s a curious trend and happening rather profusely across the web. Good or bad? I can’t quite say — except that in the case of Flock, we’re using the invite system to start out slowly on purpose. We want to not only be able to scale up organically, but we also want to cultivate relationships with our brave early adopters so that we can build the best experience possible over time. And to that end — we want to make sure that when we do launch publicly, we’ve hammered out all the glaring issues — as well as minor ones — so that sum total Flock makes you more productive, more explorative, and more voraciously social on the web. So for now, Flock will remain available to few kindred souls with enough courage to shove through our bugs and dodge the sharp edges. In the meantime, do add yourself to our invite lottery so that your name will be there when the next round of invites go out.

Not much has changed in terms of the structure of invite-only betas (even though the tools for managing them have improved), but I think something of the intimacy and purpose of these programs have been missed as more of the mainstream have gotten used to handing out just their email address for access to such initiatives.

As Fred points out that there’s value in building up social capital so that you can help stoke interest in new projects and draw the interest of potentially valuable contributors and testers, but it’s just as important to highlight the value of diligent and hard-working testers who have an interest in improving products and becoming partners in the potential success of such projects. I think there’s the potential for mutually reinforcing and ongoing relationships in the execution of a productive beta program, and that those longer-term relationships should not be overlooked.

. . .

To that end, I’m looking for some highly motivated and qualified testers for LittleSnapper, Real Mac Software’s new webpage screenshot utility. Be one of the first ten to leave a comment with your proper email address and a description of how you approach beta testing and I’ll send you info on where you can sign up. As I’m eager to see LittleSnapper mature, I won’t settle for just anyone — prove to me that you’d add value to the alpha tester program!