Red Hat, the world's largest, most successful open source software company and one I'd like to work for in the very near future, submitted this blog post last month about SOPA and PIPA. It explains how such bills could devastate online collaboration, innovation, and the sharing of ideas and technology.
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.
Lovink's latest book is all about social media. It addresses a number of the critiques we offered in class - which is not to say it answers or does away with them - but also reinforces that he offers less a theory than a report or journalistic take. (One example is the way he looks at the uneven use of blogging world wide, so that blogging becomes much less monolithic in this account.)
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."
I thought I just commented on this but maybe I commented on the wrong thing because I don't see my original comment! I'm definitely new to Diigo.
Ben, this post made me wonder...are you familiar with SoundCloud, and if so, do you know of any free online software like it that take mp3 files and convert them to HTML code that can be embedded into a webpage?
Sound cloud looks really interesting, but they host all of the content and you just send out links to share it. In order to play content on your page, you need a mess of java script commands and I have no idea how to link that to your content... Guess that's why all the bands pay big bucks to have someone build their site for them.
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.
I really need to try out Pinterest. I have heard great things about it!
PS. Maybe these people do not lead the lives of grad students? So perhaps they have more time? haha
Martina, I did not understand Pinterest for a long time - had an account and never used it! Then a friend took 2 minutes to show me how it works - and I've been hooked ever since. Regardless of anything any critic or fan says of Pinterest, it's a pretty fantastically brilliant website. (And a lot fun!)
I'm absolutely addicted to Pinterest, much more so than Facebook! Pinterest and Diigo seem to have operate on a similar premises: social bookmarking with an attractive user interface.
This article highlights Iran's response to reports like the one found at Ars Technica that I posted earlier today.
"Iran has denied online reports surfacing Tuesday that it plans to cut access to the Internet in August and replace it with a national intranet, according to a statement by the ministry of communication and information technology."
But, according to the article, Iran "...does have plans to establish a 'national information network' billed as a totally closed system that would function like a sort of intranet for the Islamic republic."