Group items tagged

This article examines how Red Hat transitioned from free open source software to a system they sell through a subscription with updates, patches, and bug fixes. Red Hat still provides free code, though; a community project called Fedora provides "a testing ground for the enterprise features delivered to Red Hat's paying customers," allowing both the company and the users to benefit from collaboration. This article shows the balance of sustainability between free and paid access. It also echoes Kenneth Goldman's claims in Uncreative Writing because the CEO says, "If you believe in the concept of modular innovation where a lot of different people add to works that came before them, patents clearly slow that down."

Ok-- so maybe this doesn't DIRECTLY apply to a reading on the syllabus, but this is a kind of joke site and will make you look super important and busy on the job or wherever. Kind of interesting to try to decipher what this code is doing. I certainly can't figure it out.

This article examines the use of emotional attachment and building of unique stories to create buzz through social media sites like twitter and facebook.

This short article has a unique commentary on the "blog bubble" from a business perspective, hinting that corporate blogging is on the rise and that social media will burst long before blogs. It's something to go along with our reading this week.

This article touches upon the benefits of incorporating social media into business practices and explains how anyone, even those who aren't familiar with social media, can learn to harness their power.

Why? Good question. $1 billion seems like a big chunk of change to shell out when there isn't an obvious indicator that there will be a turn of profit.

Have you seen the Daily Show bit on this? Hilarious! Does seem rather odd, but I have faith that almighty Facebook has some sort of plan...maybe.

I know there are some coffee lovers in the class, so this is double apt. Like Four Barrel Coffee, The Daily Grind also chooses not to offer wifi to its customers. An interesting twist to the notion that the Internet is considered a hindrance to our social lives, even over coffee.

Twitter etiquette - knowing when to be personal and when to be professional - or recognizing the lack of a line between the two.

What strikes me as especially interesting about this book review is that it emphasizes and leads with the buzz surrounding its predominantly digital publication instead of the controversy about the popularity of hardcore erotic literature for women.

An article addressing how twitter can actually be damaging to use in a crisis.

Keeping track of passwords is definitely a hassle for most of us, so a service that groups all of them didn't seem far off. It will be interesting to see how this develops, and if it will catch on and be secure.

This is the latest on the Google/Viacom copyright issue over videos on youtube.

While I'm not a fan of reading online/on a computer screen-yet-I am interested in this transition from paper to digital texts (textbooks). There seems to be several advantages, such as constantly updating and affordable ($49 for a science textbook?!).

another plug for e-texts

McLuhan and Bogart would probably enjoy this article because it involves procedural rhetoric. It examines how "gamification strategies"--using games to change behavior in real life--can promote energy efficiency. Companies like SimpleEnergy are creating apps that let users track their energy usage, find ways to improve, and compete with friends and neighbors for spots on a leaderboard. Gamification succeeds because apparently social pressure can motivate people even more than monetary incentives, and these initiatives combine both types of incentives: An energy usage competition at the University of Hawaii led to some dorms cutting energy usage by up to 20 percent. This specific method also allows users to save money and conserve energy without "radical infrastructure changes" or the corruption and waste that often results from government subsidies to politically-connected "green" companies like Solyndra and possibly Sapphire Energy. In addition, the apps provide large-scale energy usage data that researchers can use to measure both change over time and the impact of energy usage on other variables.

This article addresses whether or not learning new programming languages is worth the time and energy. According to the article, learning new languages (1) expands your ability to use several different approaches to solve problems, (2) might teach you techniques that carry over to old languages, (3) exposes you to new communities, (4) provides additional marketable skills, and (5) stimulates your mind. At the end, one user stipulates that he only learns a language when it "has enough maturity, has a good developer base, and offers significantly different outcomes from the others I know."

My new favorite Firefox add on that combats all the new privacy stuff unearthed about the big internet titans.