JOURNAL: Cell Phone Coordination of Open Source Protests
Here’s a cool little phone app called Sukey to help people navigate during a protest/riot. Very useful in avoiding kettling (a slang term for police crowd containment). Check out the tutorial.
What Is Data Privacy Day? [INFOGRAPHIC]
from Mashable! by Sarah Kessler
Google won’t autocomplete “bittorrent” but will autocomplete “how to kidnap a child”
from Boing Boing by Mark Frauenfelder
U.S. military: No evidence yet of Assange-Manning collaboration
Although the U.S. State Department has reportedly downplayed the impact of WikiLeaks’ cable disclosures in private, the Justice Department is still trying to find grounds to bring WikiLeaks honcho Julian Assange to trial in the United States. Doing that requires proving that Assange actively collaborated with his alleged source, Pfc. Bradley Manning, to obtain the cables; Assange has said from the beginning that this never happened, and that he didn’t even know Manning’s name until it was reported in the media.
2011-01-27: Bradley Manning: The Week in Review
The last 7 days have seen numerous developments in the Bradley Manning story, which indicate clear problems with the official line on Manning’s detainment and on the criminal investigation into Manning’s charges. We have also been given insight into the management of the Brig at Quantico, and into the process by which the United States government discourages supporters of causes it find troublesome. (For the complete background on the Bradley Manning story, please see FDL’s excellent timeline, here.)
Obama: ?We Are a Nation of Google and Facebook?
In addressing American innovation in the State of the Union Address, President Obama called America a nation of Google and Facebook. The mention is significant not only because Obama has been known for leveraging social media, but also the timing of the mention. Google announced many job openings today and the Associated Press reported that the company could hire more than 6,000 people this year. And it?s no coincidence that President Obama mentioned the word jobs 25 times in his address.
Journalist, Hacker, Spy, Racketeer
What if Wikileaks, from the start, had announced itself as an anonymous group of hackers whose work aimed at producing an open access archive of leaked, stolen, and otherwise illegally obtained and illegally reproduced documents? Chances are that in a conflict with the U.S. or any other government, Wikileaks? activists would have found themselves in a ?catch me if you can? game.
Report: free blog themes usually aren’t
Most free WordPress themes include ads, links, SEO douchebaggery and malware. Avoid anything that includes Base64-encoded sections or found via Google searches [WPMU via Metafilter]
We need a serious critique of net activism | Technology | guardian.co.uk
Digital Literacy & Me
from New Media Narratives by Denise K
This assignment was a challenge as I do not have a extensive online community and I am not familiar with all the new digital technologies. Podproducer seemed overwhelming and I did not find any online manuals or blogs to help me feel comfortable with the program. I ended up using Window?s Movie Maker as it allowed me to import the files and then drag the files to a “work area”. I played around with different ways to record the audio. I found that using Window?s Movie Maker was the best alternative as it kept the sound consistent with the music audio. This was a challenging project but now I feel more capable of working with some web applications.
Morozov’s Net Delusion: skeptical take on net-freedom marred by straw-men
My latest Guardian column, “We need a serious critique of net activism,” is a long, detailed review of Evgeny Morozov’s new book The Net Delusion, a book that seeks to debunk “cyber-utopianism” and the idea that the Internet can be used as a force for freedom. I agree with much of what Morozov has to say, but his portrait of “cyber-utopians” consists of straw-men and caricatures, and he ignores the substantive, nuanced arguments about technology and freedom that technology activists have pursued for decades.
Week 3: History of the Book
from New Media Narratives by Jess
It?s not just about the printing press! The history of the book presents us with a complete, observable communications revolution. The historical record allows us to examine the whole of a vast socio-cultural, political, and economic change over a period of some three to five hundred years (depending on whose perspective you prefer). By following the developments in manuscript and print book production, tied to the changes in the technologies used to produce those texts, we can also chart the various changes in social organization, politics and economics.
Connected They Write: The Lure of Writing on the Web
from DML Central by jbrazil
Free Software Foundation’s annual fundraising drive
The nonprofit 501(c)3 Free Software Foundation is running its annual fundraiser. The FSF publishes, maintains and updates the GPL free software licenses, maintains and publishes several critical free software projects, and performs advocacy, lobbying and litigation in support of the idea of user-modifiable, freely copyable software. I’ve been an annual donor to the FSF for many years and I’ve worked alongside of them at various policy bodies, from the UN to regional governments, to shape treaties, standards and laws.
Francis Ford Coppola, copyfighter
In this interview with The 99%, Francis Ford Coppola says some extremely thought-provoking and sensible things about creativity, mastery, copyright, the business of the arts, collaboration, and life. It’s always great to learn about seasoned, accomplished artists who refuse the lure of reactionary, knee-jerk get-off-my-lawnery:
2011-01-25: Bradley Manning Placed on Suicide Watch
In a development which may cast new light on yesterday’s incidents at Quantico military prison, NBC reports that “U.S. military officials” indicated that Bradley Manning was placed on suicide watch last week by Brig Commander James Averhart, in a violation of procedure.
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