Category: Society & economy

Hacking Google proxies on your BlackBerry

You may or may not realize this, but when you use Gmail on your BlackBerry, they’re doing some tricky things behind the scenes to “improve” your “Gmobile” experience.

For one thing, when you’re reading your Gmail, they strip down the service to its barest essentials: AJAX, tables, selecting… all gone. But unsurprisingly, it remains quite useful (that whole simplicity thing).

Anyway, I discovered an interesting hack along with some serious privacy … concerns … while tooling around with Gmail.

The privacy issue is pretty simple: everything that you visit from Gmail (and this is more or less true whether you’re on Gmail Mobile or the regular version) is tracked by Google. Click on a link in an email from your friend in Gmail? Google knows. One might argue that this is how they improve their service and add relevance to the AdWords that they show you (they already grep your emails to contextualize the ads in the sidebar, so watching the links you click improves the personalized search results you get). Ok, that’s the tradeoff I’m willing to bare in order to receive their free services; I’m not complaining necessarily, just pointing it out because they don’t make it explicit that they track the links that you click.

Now, on to that hack.

I was looking to make dinner reservations last night on the OpenTable website. Tragically they don’t have a mobile-friendly version (still using tables for layout?? gross!) so the experience was… let’s just say, pretty terrible.

But then I remembered! — ah ha! — Google tracks all my surfing habits with their Gmail proxy — but they also reformat all the sites that I visit to be more mobile friendly… So I opened up the Send Address dialog in the BlackBerry browser and sent it off to my Gmail account (which I’ve set up as “me” in my address book).

I opened up my Gmail inbox in the BlackBerry browser and sure enough, visiting the link that I just sent myself took me through the Google proxy to a page that looked like this:

OpenTable over the Gmail proxy

…instead of this.

Sweet! So now whenever you find yourself on a site that’s completely unusable on your mobile device, just prefix the url with this http://www.google.com/gwt/n?u= and you’ll have a much more usable interface, thanks to Google’s spying proxies!

Bonus: WordPress plugin Bad Behavior will block attempts by proxies like Google’s from being able to access your site. I’ve got it installed and you can see how many Spambots have attempted to access my site in the few days that I’ve had it running!

MySource, the next social worknet?

So it’s funny, but there are now two projects already that are being hosted in Google’s new open source environment that I want to “join” (requests are already in to the creators)… I wonder if, like Flickr groups, you’ll eventually be able to “join” GC projects — and be able to contribute and so forth…

This still doesn’t deal with the need for tools to enable non-code-writers to get involved in open-source (as is the goal of slow and effusive CivicForge) but the simplicity of the GC site makes it much more attractive to folks like me, who can’t stand the clutter and obnoxiousness of SF.

Oh, and in other news, SF is now allowing you to use external SVN repositories for your projects. Accelerated by the Google announcement? Methinks so.

—

So Moore’s law talks about the speed of processors doubling every so often (specifics aren’t that important at the moment). Invariably, games, apps and whatnot other myriad things come along to suck up that juice necessitating upgrades, new hardware and so on. It’s essentially a personal issue, however, one that, so long as Moore’s law stays unbroken, you can overcome it by buying or upgrading your computer or being conservative about the technology you use.

The bandwidth problem, however, has no equivalent Moore’s law. Even as faster wireless standards emerge, the series of tubes that make up the internets aren’t getting any fatter. And yet more and more race horses, poker chips, blow-up dolls and lottery balls will be being sent thru the tubes the more people go online. And already, at least in the states, our bandwidth is retarded compared to Europe (as in “being late” or “behind”). So I’m kinda sittin’ here wonderin’, y’know, what’s the big plan moving forward? Are we just waiting to turn on the dark fiber? If so, turn it on already! If not, ok, what? Lay more fiber? I mean, what’s to guarentee that, as we rely evermore on the cloud, that the pipes that we rely on to access it are going to be able to bare the burden? I mean car makers don’t built the roads — what is our civic interest — nay, duty — in making sure that we have unhindered, unthrottled bandwidth into the future?

Tom, say it ain't so!

The Demise of MySpace Tom?

Tom, I know we haven’t always seen eye-to-eye but you were my first friend on MySpace, and so, in my book, that made us BFF.

But it troubles me, Tom, when I read today that the government has passed US House Resolution 5319, the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA). The act looks at how much a “commericial social networking site and/or chat room”:

  1. is offered by a commercial entity;
  2. permits registered users to create an on-line profile that includes detailed personal information;
  3. permits registered users to create an on-line journal and share such a journal with other users;
  4. elicits highly-personalized information from users; and
  5. enables communication among users.

Clearly this is aimed at MySpace!

So Tom… when I went to your MySpace page to see what you had to say about it… you’d been deleted! If this act is about “deleting online predators” well, I can only hope that this was a mistake, but… I’m afriad that, Tom, there’s simply no way we can be BFF if you’ve been deleted.

For whatever reasons.

I hope you understand.

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Network discrimination is basically the equivalent of creating a first class seating section on the internet. And I hate the whole first class/stearage thing. JetBlue succeeds in part because it did away with this hierarchical system. Why should the net go backwards?

The War Tapes & the future of killing

The War Tapes

My buddy Sean Coon pointed me The War Tapes (trailer) — a documentary I’d run into on his blog before — that was shot entirely by US soldiers in Iraq.

I’ve not seen it yet, but intend to tonight at a free screening at the Castro Theater.

What I’m looking forward to is the narrative offered by the people actually engaged in the battle and who were trained in warfare, as opposed to the embedded journalists we heard from earlier on, who were not trained so much in survival or in the rules of war, but in the telling of stories and of “objective analysis”. Think about it: when you’ve got a semi-automatic weapon, people are out to kill you (and you’re “allowed” to kill them) and you’ve got a video camera, your perspective is going to be vastly different from someone who’s just along for the ride to “report back” to TV viewers back home.

Put another way: you might not be suprised, but I’ve never shot anyone with a deadly weapon. I have been shot and shot at, but only with paintballs and BBs. My life was never at risk. I never put someone else’s life at risk. And it seems odd to me that there are humans, all over the world, with these weapons whose primary purpose is the destruction of other humans. Looking specifically at guns, but also at the lot of weaponry that has been developed over the course of human history, I can’t help but find the whole business of killing other people a tad… perplexing.

Still, it’s rather lucrative and there are even companies that offer people for hire who are exceptionally good at killing other people. And if that doesn’t seem palatable, well, there are always robots and remote killing machines that can do the job instead.

So anyway, this is so curious to me because of how “citizen journalism” enlarges the conversation. I mean, these stories now come from regular people, people who have left their families and their friends, on a mission to protect American interests and “National Security”, who can speak openly, and without the kind of spin, hyberole or censure that you might find elsewhere. Regardless, I don’t know or even care much about whether this is propaganda, because what it is is the telling of stories by people living in the trenches who get up everyday and might kill other humans by the time they go to sleep the same night.

And I just can’t fathom what that’s like.

I do hope — somehow, again, perhaps naively — that this connected medium, someday, will make it increasingly difficult to substantiate the killing of other people. It just strikes me that the coming generation of always-on connected kids will be far too connected to people across the Earth — to allow for their friends to be fired upon, shot at, or bombed. The test may come soon enough, depending on what happens with Iran — given that it seems much more wired than Iraq (even as of a year ago). I mean, what if? Should the Bush administration decide to take military action, will the Iranian blogosphere inspire the sympathies of the liberal digerati and make an act of violence against the Iranian people political suicide? When we can directly connect with the people that our government intends to bomb, how does that change diplomacy and the ability of the government to act?

These are not questions that I have answers to, but that this kind of documentary inspires. Objectively, whether the story is being told by US soldiers, the Taleban, Al Qaeda, Iranians, Canadians or anyone else directly involved, this changes things. And it changes our understanding and the proximity of killing. Will it, I wonder, change behavior?

The future of open leadership

ObeyWith the Feed Icon Trademark debate, I’ve become fascinated by a number of Mitchell Baker‘s recent posts on open source leadership (or perhaps more appropriately community stewardship).

Just last night we held our second coworking meeting to discuss a number of topics (of which we were able to plow through very few)… Key among them was the question of how to best open up the space for non-anchors while not overly burdening the existing key-holders. And, in opening up the space, how to we set a fair pay-for-the-time-you-use rate that doesn’t burden the project with excessive overhead or rules.

After an exhausting discussion for over an hour and a half, we had to adjourn the meeting following Brad’s Snooze Button Guideline. We covered quite a number of possibilities, from hourly rates to hosting quarterly “supporters”, but ultimately ended up without a final resolution other than to submit proposals to the mailing list for continued debate.

Here’s what’s strange about it: throughout the meeting (I can’t be sure but…) I did feel like I was sitting in the role of facilitator — not exactly the leader, but close enough. I mean, that’s a pretty common role to play, right? Most meetings need a leader of sorts, right?

So now the question that I have is, or perhaps what I’m most confused about, is what kind of leadership does the coworking project need? What kind can it stand? I agree with Mitchell that relying on the “community to decide” will moreoften than not result in disappointment or frustration for communities actually don’t decide anything, they only appear to make decisions. And yet, there is this apparent allergy in open source communities that forces the subversion of the ego and the consequent vilification of those who attempt to make a decision on behalf of the group.

Ian responds to Mitchell:

Good leaders do not make decisions – they simply help the community to make better decisions. To do this they listen well, and they think long and hard. Then, when they see the prevailing wisdom surface, they communicate those decisions more fruitfully.

…which sounds pretty good and egalitarian on the surface. In fact, not a bit unlike what they call representative government. And yet, I think that that only captures a fraction of what a leader, in the community context, really does.

It is my belief that good, reflective and responsive leadership is needed for any project to find success. But that leadership need not be hierarchical. Or dominant. Or, most of all, exclusively masculine. And it also can’t be cowardly or cow-tow to the imposing and voluminous voice of the community it serves. That’s why leadership is important; it’s not about power, it’s about clarity of purpose and of seeing things through to their desired conclusion, deterring that which threatens to scuttle the intentions of the group.

Case in point, the witch-hunt that O’Reilly recently survived suggests that communities can easily be turned into echo chambers for groupthink and channeled hostility. Without strong leadership, you’re liable to end up with a neverending succession of teapot tempests without accomplishing anything productive.

So, coming back to the meeting last night, we have goals in common, even if the path is not clear. Which is precisely the kind of opportunity in which leadership emerges — the kind that isn’t focused in any one individual but is shared among the individuals in the collective. In a very real sense, it is the BarCamp model of leadership, of self-determination, of personal responsibility and of realizing your own role in consciously creating circumstances for yourself.

The point is this: open source leadership is not a contradiction, it’s just deeply misunderstood. And it seems high time that, as we open up to serving wider markets and communities, that we learn what it really means to embrace a kind of leadership that does not rely on traditional concentrations of power or of exclusivity or malevolent competition, but instead works to helps us each reach beyond ourselves to reveal each our own potentials. I don’t know clearly what it looks like, but I do think that Mitchell is on to something and that somehow, this little coworking experiment of ours might bring us steps closer to discovering just how open, modern leadership will actually bring us forward.

Where journalists and bloggers fear to roam

The lead off panel this morning at FING is about the media. Pretty broad, yes, but it’s interesting to see a representative of CNET paired with someone who seems to represent the avant-blog… i.e. that “citizen journalism” (which is not really journalism in my view, but local reportage) will eventually shrink the 250 or so Le Monde journalists currently on the roles (apologies if my comprehension is lacking as the French still foils me).

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the role of journalism in society lately, owing to a book called Backstory that I found on the sidewalk on my way to catch the N line. It’s helped me to reconsider and analyze my thinking and the timely discussion about “citizen media”, “citizen journalism” and the Wall Streetifcation of newspapers such as the Chicago Tribune.

Invariably there is a need for journalists, just as there is a need for chefs. Though the raw ingredients of any story are plentiful, it’s how they are assembled and the experience and presentation (as in, context) that makes something not merely palatable but actually satisfying. In that respect, the role of a journalist in society is to inform, to question, to foment debate by adding new ingredients to a story to spice things up. Additionally, they are able to expand and recontextual the main course in the context of a meal, something that “citizen reporters” rarely do — or need to, for that matter, owing to the shared local knowledge of their audience.

The guy from CNET argues that neither blogging and citizen media or journalism will necessarily continue as they are today — that instead, the media companies of the future will exploit many sources of information (including company databases that are currently private as well as authentic media), cultivate “information professionals”, and create context for stories that citizen reporters can not or do not have the time to create.

But the journalist is not going away — not as a discipline. To think so is foolish, just as suggesting that scientists are going away because Makezine is becoming popular. The rise of the amateur does not imply the demise of the professional, rather it signifies the continuation of the great sorting out that is going on, as suggested by Friedman. And in this case, it seems to me that if we are to make the best of it, we will rediscover and help redirect professionals back into the roles that they first trained for and originally desired to fulfil. Rather than writing to “please an audience” or “sell more papers”, the journalists of the future (in the original sense of the word, not the Wall Street version) will act on our behalf, helping us to understand and mediate the vast quantities of information that will surely be upon us all in short order.

Blowing up trademarks

Ian Betteridge provides me an opportunity to clarify what I meant in my post on Why BarCamp is a Community Mark.

In strewing together patents, copyright and trademark, I created what he refers to as a specious argument, which, after having looked it up, means that it sounds good on the surface to the point of making sense but ultimately is wrong. Given the structure of my argument and how he interpreted what I said, I would actually agree with him.

But that’s because I was commenting on the need to reexamine all US intellectual property laws in light of the recent “Web 2.0” brouhaha, and in particular, trademark, since copyright is essentially debunked with Creative Commons and patents, well, they’re a whole different can of fish.

Let me rephrase my argument thus: Trademarks do not stifle innovation (unlike copyright and patents). They do, instead, inhibit distributed ownership of a mark or symbol, and when it comes to an idea that a community strongly connects with or takes at least partial ownership, trying to wrest it out of the hands of that community will result in the kind of tantrum we witnessed recently.

Have you ever taken a pacifier away from a contently suckling 2-year-old? Exactly.

(And I offer that metaphor not as a commentary on the behavior of anyone but to give you an idea of the attachment one might form with something it identifies as its own, even if, clearly, it’s the property of the parent who purchased it).

So, if we’re to move into a productive discourse about this area of IP, let’s, shall we?

Ian poses two questions to me in his post:

  1. Can anyone give an example where trademark law – NOT patents or copyright – has been used to stifle innovation or damage the interests of consumers (and no, the O’Reilly spat can’t be used – the facts of the case aren’t exactly clear, especially if you read Tim O’Reilly’s response).
  2. If trademark law was removed from the statute books tomorrow, what would be the consequences?

To the first, I’d argue that that’s not really my point, at least in terms of stifling innovation, nor the reason why trademark must be considered.

He does combine the notion of “[damaging] the interests of consumers”, but I don’t think that’s actually the argument I’m making either. In fact, I’m more interested in the plight of Tim O’Reilly — and what he might have done differently — besides sending out the C&D letter — to protect or enforce his organization’s mark. Let me be clear: it’s important that people receive due credit for the work that they do and the ideas that they generate (and, to counter Mr Douglas’ suggestion, I have always called myself a co-organizer of the first BarCamp — pfffbttt). This is a tenant of open source chivalry and at the cornerstone of a meritocratic system.

Trademark law was designed to stop people from using a mark in unsanctioned ways — and requires obvious enforcement efforts in order to sanctify your ownership of that mark: fail to protect it, you lose your legal protections.

So what the whole idea of a Community Mark is to proactively look at this situation — at the impossibility and huge expense of trademark enforcement on the web — and find some balanced approach whereby the cost of enforcement is thrust upon those who use the term most and belong to the original creative community. I don’t think that anyone would argue that the O’Reilly camp didn’t help advance the Web 2.0 concept and phrase — just like Adaptive Path-man JJG pushed forward the term AJAX for technologies that had been in use on the web forever. The difference, as it played out last week, was that the legal department at CMP decided to try to enforce their legal protections, and got biatch-slapped because the community felt betrayed (well, in particular, Tom Raftery). His response could have easily been predicted, as it was a human one, and ended up with everyone feeling a bit indignant about how the witchhunt gathered force so quickly in the absense of an official “Tim” response (just like the response to Cheney’s shotgun wedding after 24 hours of silence).

A Community Mark is a pragmatic reconsideration of the kind of laws that were written long before we had the internet and instant forms of mass communication. And just like the Dean campaign or the Spread Firefox NYTimes campaign, time and time again it’s been shown that if you rely on your community in real ways, and give them influence of your destiny, they will come out to support you — and most notably — protect you.