I watch amazed as the events in Iran unfold. Who knows how this will turn out. More often than not, the common people do not fair well when they stand opposed to a tyrannical regime but I have hope. The eyes of the world are upon them. My eyes are upon them. These are not my enemies. The people of Iran look all too human to me. They do not appear to be the ghastly nuclear bomb building “other”. When I see the pictures and look in their faces, I see my neighbors, my family. Their expressions of fear, hope, and defiance bind me to them. I am empathetic. I hope for their safety and well being. I yearn for their freedom. Read more…

This really isn’t news per se. Facebook made a run at them late last year but fell short in their bid. Now comes Google.

Robert Scoble has weighed in. I think Scoble raises some excellent points in this post. I have wondered lately if large corporations can really handle social computing. There is too much risk. And in the interest of full disclosure, let me say that I am a Product Manager on a social computing platform at Microsoft. I spend a lot of time thinking about risk. He is tough on IBM, Oracle, and Adobe but toughest on Microsoft. I think he is daring Microsoft to do it but daring Microsoft to do it in the right way. Take the risk, he is saying. He backs Google only to the extent that they will know how to use the technology but hints at what the future of Twitter will be if Google buys them…oblivion. They will chop the code up and use what they can to further their own initiatives but Twitter will be no more. Read more…

This week, President Bush signed the Pro-Copyright law. We now have a copyright czar. For me, having a copyright czar reeks of dystopian new-speak that would make Orwell proud. Why does copyright need a czar? How about potentate or terminator? Why czar? Oh well, I guess it fits with other recent efforts. We have a drug czar in our war on drugs. How is that war going? Are we winning? I don’t think so. I think we’re running neck and neck in that war with the war on poverty, i.e., we’re losing. Come to think of it, do we have a poverty czar?  Apparently Hillary Clinton thought it was a good idea but it never got any traction. For whom would this czar act as overlord, the rich? This would just get awkward…no future in it. Read more…

I first heard of Gever Tulley and his Tinkering School a couple of months ago on the NPR news program, All Things Considered. Any body who wants to put power tools, fire, and knives into the hands of children is ok in my book. I wanted to know more. I did a search and found that he had done a TED talk. I think the nine minute video is well worth the time but the part that is germaine to our study here is his fifth item. He encourages kids to violate the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). He mentions in his talk how he has  the children do this:

1. buy a song on I-Tunes
2. write it to a CD
3. rip the CD to an MP3
4. play it

 but he doesn’t say what the conversation is that accompanies the activity. Read more…

Hot, Flat, and Crowded

One of my co-workers called my attention to the fact that Thomas Friedman has published his new book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded. The interesting thing, I think, with this publcation is that he has left chapter 18 for a future release and we will write it. He says of chapter 18:

In it I hope to include the best ideas and proposals sent in from readers: ideas about clean energy, energy efficiency, and conservation; about petropolitics and nation-building in America; about how we can help take the lead in the renewal of our country and the Earth alike by going Code Green.

The book was publshed yesterday and already there are six contributions to the new chapter. Not only do people have opportunities to contribute ideas but we can also vote on whether we like or dislike the contributions. Surely there will be self promoters, nut jobs and trolls but I also expect there will be bona fide contributors. Read more…

So the story that most people know is the story of free or open source software. This is market share of Apache web server-

-one of the critical applications in web based communications. In 1995, two groups of people said wow, this is really important, the web! We need a much better web server! One was a motley collection of volunteers who just decided you know, we really need this, we should write one, and what are we going to do with what — well, we’re gonna share it! And other people will be able to develop it. The other was Microsoft. Now if I told you that 10 years later, the motley crew of people who didn’t control anything that they produced acquired 20% of the market and was the red line (refers to second largest share on graph), it would be amazing! Right? Think of it in minivans. A group of automobile engineers on their weekends are competing with Toyota. Right?

But in fact, of course, the story is it’s the 70% (refers to top blue line), including the major e-commerce site — 70% of a critical application on which web based communications and applications work is produced in this form in direct competition with Microsoft, not in a side issue — in a central strategic decision to try to capture a component of the net.

This got me curious. How does this happen? Is it really just a motley crew, a group of random people drawn together in the interest of building a Web Server? Well, it may have started that way but it no longer is. They now operate under what is called a meritocracy. They call this government by merit where newcomers are considered as volunteers who are looking to help rather than people who are coming to steal power.

Read more…

According to Chris Kohler with Wired Magazine:

Xbox Live general manager Marc Whitten told Next Generation this week that Microsoft will soon begin to delete some Xbox Live Arcade games from the service. The rationale is, to put it nicely, paper-thin: To “focus on quality over quantity” and “make it easier to find the games you are looking for.”

I am surprised by this in light of what I have studied about the long tail. It seems to make sense in the context of that theory, that once an item makes it into inventory, it just stays there. Why would they pull a title?

Read more…

Here’s your chance to prove what you can do in 128 characters. Copyblogger is running a contest for the most creative tweet.

- Mark