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Four short links: 20 October 2009

By Nat Torkington
October 20, 2009

Poles, Politeness, and Politics in the Age of Twitter (Stephen Fry) -- begins with a discussion of a UK storm but rapidly turns into a discussion of fame in the age of Twitter, modern political discourse, the "deadwood press", and The Commons in Twitter Assembled. There is an energy abroad in the kingdom, one that yearns for a new...

Four short links: 14 October 2009

By Nat Torkington
October 14, 2009

10Gui Video -- demo of a new take on multitouch, a tablet and new GUI conventions. (via titine on Twitter) Behind the Scenes at WhatDoTheyKnow -- numbers and stories from the MySociety project, which provides a public place for Official Information Act requests and responses. The fact information is subject to copyright and restrictions on re-use does not exempt...

Four short links: 1 October 2009

By Nat Torkington
October 1, 2009

The End of Objectivity, Web2.0 Version -- Our behaviour as journalists is now measurable. And measurability gives the lie to the pretence that journalists behave like scientists, impartially observing the petri dish of society. (via Pia Waugh) Screens in Context -- ideas for the video screens spring up in place of billboards. Whilst the advertising industry has one of...

How Alan Turing Finally Got a Posthumous Apology

By John Graham-Cumming
September 17, 2009

Guest blogger John Graham-Cumming initiated and led the successful petition drive to procure an apology to Alan Turing from the UK government. John is the author of The Geek Atlas, CTO of a stealth-mode start-up, and a longtime programmer who has a doctorate in computer security. If you're in London this Saturday, September 19, come by the launch party for...

Four short links: 16 Apr 2009

By Nat Torkington
April 16, 2009

China, databases, storage, and git: China's Complicated Internet Culture (Ethan Zuckerman) -- summary of Rebecca McKinnon's talk at the Berkman Internet Center. Democracy is complex and hard to transition to, online democracy doubly so. Rebecca questions the widespread but unjustified belief that the Great Firewall of China is all that separates Chinese citizens from the empowered liberty of the West,...

Four short links: 10 Feb 2009

By Nat Torkington
February 9, 2009

Happy Monday! Kid coding and web-powered political transparency form the artisanal wholewheat organic bread slices around a sandwich filling of meaty (or tofuy) web travel APIs and blogly angst: Art and Code -- conference on programming environments for "artists, young people, and the rest of us". Alice! Hackety Hack! Scratch! Processing! And more! March 7-9 at CMU. Want! (I've written...

Four short links: 5 Feb 2009

By Nat Torkington
February 5, 2009

Dearest Reader, for today's compendium of brief pointers to the writings of the world's greatest minds features language not suitable for children. So please stop reading this blog post to your child. Please. Think of the children. Don't Work for Assholes (Derek Powazek) -- sound advice that we all have to learn, then relearn. Broadband Stimulus Package Explained by Yochai...

Four short links: 23 Jan 2009

By Nat Torkington
January 23, 2009

Potty mouth, piracy, pointers to the future of the web, and Presidential technology woes, all in today's link roundup. F*ck the Cloud - Jason Scott's brilliant (and profanity-strewn) rant about cloud computing and the things people throw away without thinking about. Jason, an Internet historian, has a unique perspective and I think what he says makes a lot of sense....

Government Transparency is Our Responsibility: Apps for America

By Timothy M. O'Brien
January 21, 2009

Great, we have an Administration that is embracing electronic transparency. Getting the data is only half the struggle. Now, it is your turn to make sure that this data is parsed, distributed, and displayed in compelling ways. If you are looking for something "important" to contribute your time to, take a look at Sunlight Labs' "Apps for America" contest. We're at the ground floor of a revolution in open-source, political technology, and this is your chance to contribute.

Inauguration Tech: change.gov -> whitehouse.gov

By Timothy M. O'Brien
January 20, 2009

That was fast? The Obama Administration launched the new whitehouse.gov as soon as the new President was sworn into office. Here are the before and after pictures. What do you think of the new site? What is your advice for the new Administration's webmasters?

Design patterns for public activism

By Andy Oram
December 30, 2008

Programmers know the impact that design patterns have had on designing and coding. Could patterns have just as strong an impact on people taking action in their communities? That's the thrust of the patterns published at the Public Sphere Project. The most fleshed-out patters are now published in the book Liberating Voices! A Pattern Language for Communication Revolution by the initiator of the project, Douglas Schuler.

Software for Civic Life: An Interview with Mike Mathieu of Frontseat.org

By Joshua-Michele Ross
December 30, 2008

In this interview Mike Mathieu, founder of Frontseat.org, discusses how he is helping to build “software for civic life”. Using publicly available data and web services (many of their applications use S3 and EC2) Frontseat creates simple, highly functional tools like Walkscore (rating neighborhood walkability) and Countmore (helping students in the recent elections decide which state to cast their...

It's Not Over: We are "the change we need."

By Tim O'Reilly
November 22, 2008

Like a lot of people, I was feeling a bit of post-partum letdown after the election. Those of us who were really engaged, following the polls, making calls to undecided voters, arguing out the merits of the candidates, experienced a bit of a vacuum after the election. Doonesbury summed it up pretty well: "I've been on a constant news drip...

A 2008 e-Voting Wrapup with Dr. Barbara Simons

By James Turner
November 7, 2008

Dr. Barbara Simons knows something about electronic voting, enough so that she was appointed to the advisory board for the Federal Election Assistance Commission, the group responsible for overseeing the technological overhaul of the nation's voting systems. So we though she'd be the logical choice to go to for a postmortem of this year's election e-Voting experiences.

Obama Rides the Internet to the White House

By Kurt Cagle
November 6, 2008

Al Gore may have "invented" the Internet (as his critics occasionally charged) but there is no question that Barack Obama is the first successful presidential nominee to fully exploit the medium's potential. While it is always difficult to know any president-elect's exact plans for a topic as focused as the Internet, a look at how he used the power of social networking and the Internet in general provides an intriguing look into the technical side of an Obama administration.

In Support of Science [and Tim]

By Nitesh Dhanjani
November 4, 2008

Venues such as O'Reilly are not likely to discuss politics or religion often. Yet, as scientists and technologists, when we do have something to say that addresses an important topic where we can offer reasoning and critical thought - lets not be shy about it.

Why Voting Technology Must be Open Source

By Timothy M. O'Brien
October 28, 2008

Vote flipping election machines? That's just fodder for conspiracy theorists, right? Well, no. Here's a video from Video the Vote documenting the problem and plea for Technical Voters to demand open source, transparent voting machines.

Sunlight Foundation Interview: Toward an Accountable, Transparent, and Open Government

By Timothy M. O'Brien
October 28, 2008

In this interview Sunlight discusses the importance of transparency in government, and how technologists can help filter and process the vast amount of data that the US federal government produces.

Three Degrees of Conflagration: Dr. Andrew Weaver on Modeling Global Warming

By James Turner
October 22, 2008

Dr. Andrew Weaver may be one of the most famous people you've never heard of. Weaver, a professor at the University of Victoria's School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, is one of the world's leading experts on climate modeling. He was served as lead author for last year's ground-breaking report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; and when the Discovery Channel needed someone to analyze the potential impact of their "Project Earth" geo-engineering schemes, they turned to Dr. Weaver for help. On the heels of the recent World Wildlife Federation report on vanishing sea ice, we thought it might be a good idea to chat with Dr. Weaver about the current state of the art in climate modeling, the political realities of effecting carbon reduction, and why certain proposed geoengineering ideas terrify him.

Technology, Politics and Democracy

By Joshua-Michele Ross
October 21, 2008

Recently I spoke with Jascha Franklin-Hodge, CTO and co-founder of Blue State Digital about how technology is affecting politics and democracy in the U.S. Blue State Digital was born out of Jascha's experience helping Howard Dean’s seminal run for the White House in ’04. and is the technology and strategic services company powering Barack Obama (and many other Democratic leaders...

Newsweek Repackaging Candidate Coverage for Kindle Bios

By Mac Slocum
October 14, 2008

Newsweek will aggregate its coverage of John McCain, Barack Obama, Sarah Palin and Joe Biden into four Kindle-only biographies. From Amazon's Kindle Blog: The book-length biographies contain archived reporting...

Book Review: Nudge

By Nat Torkington
September 12, 2008

This year has seen a glut of books on topics in that strange area occupied awkwardly by behavioural economics, cognitive psychology, and experimental philosophy. Some fail to distinguish themselves, merely rehashing the many ways in which we aren't perfectly rational creatures. Others, however, find an original angle to tack the last 30 years of work since Daniel Kahneman first thought...

Where Was This Guy In 2004?

By M. David Peterson
August 29, 2008

I am a registered Republican who voted for George Bush in 2000 and 2004. And then I realized I made a mistake. Had John Kerry spoke with this level of conviction when he was the Democratic Party presidential candidate,...

Audio: Lawrence Lessig on Congressional Reform and Internet for Everyone

By Timothy M. O'Brien
August 18, 2008

Lawrence Lessig discusses Change-Congress.org, a online tool for users to tag congressional candidates as supporting or opposing reforms such as public financing, earmark reform, and congressional transparency. Lessig also responds to a few questions about InternetForEveryone.org, a coalition of public interest and industry groups working for open, universal, and affordable access to broadband.

Let Our Congress Tweet. Sign the Petition.

By Timothy M. O'Brien
August 14, 2008

Social network is just beginning to affect the way the governed relate to The Government. Let's not close the door on congressional access to tools like Twitter, Qik, and Identi.ca. The Sunlight Foundation urges the Congress to clarify rules and remove restrictions on member web use. If you want congress to let member tweet, sign the petition by tweeting.

Audio: Rep. Culberson on Twittering, Energy, and Science

By Timothy M. O'Brien
August 14, 2008

In this 24 minute interview, John Culberson backs down from the partisan call to arms he issued this week on Twitter. He discusses transparency and technology in Congress, and the efforts to clarify the rules governing which web sites a member of Congress can participate in. Culberson also talks about wind energy, nuclear energy, oil exploration, doubling the budget for the National Science Foundation, and interesting innovations in Carbon Nanotubes which could dramatically change the way we use and store energy.

Radar Theme: Digital Democracy

By Nat Torkington
August 8, 2008

[This is part of a series of posts that briefly describe the trends that we're currently tracking here at O'Reilly] We can no longer smugly claim that the Internet exists separate from the law. Copyright, patent, and taxation are all pressing issues. From the other side, we can use our web techniques to fix a broken and corrupt political system....

What A Tiger Can Do

By Dale Dougherty
June 19, 2008

This past weekend I watched a superhero fall to incredible lows and rise to unbelievable heights. I wasn't watching one of the manufactured Marvel superheroes on the big screen. I was watching Tiger Woods live on TV. I was watching him create one of the most compelling stories ever in sports. Late Saturday afternoon, I began watching Tiger fight his...

America's Capacity for Change

By Tim O'Reilly
June 9, 2008

Peggy Noonan wrote a lovely few paragraphs celebrating America, in the middle of an otherwise somewhat nasty editorial about Hillary Clinton. A friend sent, by instant message, the AP flash that ran at 16:56 ET on 06-03-2008. There it was suddenly on my screen: "*** WASHINGTON (AP)—Obama clinches Democratic nomination, making him first black candidate to lead his party." A...

Book review: "The Future of the Internet (And How to Stop It)"

By Andy Oram
April 14, 2008

You can read Jonathan Zittrain's book for cogent discussions of key issues in copyright, filtering, licensing, censorship, and other pressing issues in computing and networking. But you're rewarded even more if you read this book to grasp fundamental questions of law and society "The Future of the Internet" offers valuable summaries of current debates, but Zittrain also tries always to hack away at the brambles that block the end of each path.