- New Media Challenges: Legal and Policy Considerations for Federal Use of Web 2.0 Technology (Center for American Progress) — report on the issues around Web 2.0 use in Government, which include privacy, security, Public Records Act, advertising, etc. See also It’s Not the Campaign Anymore: How the White House Is Using Web 2.0 Technology So Far from the same group.
- Government Data and the Invisible Hand — Ed Felten has written a fantastic piece on the relationship between data, presentations of the data, and the government departments that produce the data. It is full of powerful recommendations: The best way to ensure that the government allows private parties to compete on equal terms in the provision of government data is to require that federal websites themselves use the same open systems for accessing the underlying data as they make available to the public at large. (via timoreilly on Twitter)
- Fast Modularity Community Structure Inference Algorithm — This algorithm is being widely used in the community of complex network researchers, and was originally designed for the express purpose of analyzing the community structure of extremely large networks (i.e., hundreds of thousand or millions of vertices). The original version worked only with unweighted, undirected networks. I’ve recently posted a version that works on weighted, undirected networks. (via mattb on Delicious)
- First Driver for USB 3.0 — After a year-and-a-half’s worth of work, Intel hacker Sarah Sharp announced that Linux will be the first operating system supporting USB 3.0. (via deusx on Delicious)
"Web 2.0" entries
Sarah Milstein on Iranian Protests and Twitter
In this 10 minute interview, Sarah Milstein, co-author of The Twitter Book, discusses Twitter’s impact on the Iranian protests, the emerging relationship between Twitter and breaking news stories, and she addressed the fear of inadvertent transparency within immediate social messaging communications media.
Four short links: 12 June 2009
Four short links: 11 June 2009
Trends, Graffiti, Games, and Streaming Video
- Trending Topics — full source code for trendingtopics.org, Wikipedia trend analysis. Rails app running on the Cloudera Hadoop Distribution on EC2. (via mattb on Delicious)
- Graffiti from Pompeii — I can’t help but read these as Tweets. Herculaneum (on the exterior wall of a house); 10619: Apollinaris, the doctor of the emperor Titus, defecated well here (see also olde style Twitter) (via OvidPerl on Twitter)
- Online Games Dominate Beijing Startonomics — presentations from sessions on Chinese game business at Startonomics conference. Though there are many differences between the US and China games market, the one that stands out most is China’s ability to massively monetize games. Tencent, a leading Chinese web portal, social network and game developer, famously announced revenue of over $1 billion earlier this year, much of it coming from their avatar service. (via TinaTranT on Twitter)
- Ustream’s Audience for Apple iPhone Announcement Greater Than Cable News — Ustream is amazing, you can take a consumer handycam and video broadcast live to a greater audience than many TV shows get.
Twitter is Not a Conversational Platform
Perhaps the most common reason given for joining the microsharing site Twitter is "participating in the conversation" or some version of that. I myself am guilty of using this explanation. But is Twitter truly a conversational platform? Here I argue that the underlying mechanics of Twitter more closely resemble the knowledge co-creation seen in wikis than the dynamics seen with…
Completing the circle on journalists and public participation
Capital News Connection
has jumped into Web 2.0 full-tilt with
Ask Your Lawmaker.
The opportunity for a virtuous cycle of public input, professional
processing, and listener loyalty–especially in a field whose death
has been predicted by many — puts Ask Your Lawmaker into an intriguing
category of its own.
Hackers wanted! Scholarships available to coders who'll come to journalism and help save democracy
It's not news that journalism is in crisis. CNN turned newspapers into first-day fishwrap and Craigslist killed the business model. Solutions are scarce, and our democracy is at risk. I don't have a chart to guide our way through the darkness to Citizenry 2.0, but there are some who can navigate the singularity. Journalism needs great hackers. Not just nerds, but programmers who care — about the values of journalism and the power of a free press to hold government accountable.
Building Bridges with the U.S. Intelligence Community
Guest blogger Jeffrey Carr is a cyber intelligence expert, Principal of GreyLogic, columnist for Symantec's Security Focus, and author who specializes in the investigation of cyber attacks against governments and infrastructures by State and Non-State hackers. Jeff is the Principal Investigator for Project Grey Goose, an Open Source intelligence investigation into the Russian cyber attacks on Georgia in August,…
The Lean Startup Talk From Web 2.0 Expo
One of our most popular talks at the Web 2.0 Expo SF was Eric Ries’ The Lean Startup: a Disciplined Approach to Imagining, Designing, and Building New Products. I’ve embedded an audio version of his slides. Eric recommends the talk for people who want to work leaner and faster, staying grounded in facts.
Importance of Innovation in Finance & BarCampBank
“Progress is not the mere correction of evils. Progress is the constant replacing of the best there is with something still better.” -Edward Filene Two years ago, when we were organizing the first BarCampBank in the US, many people found it hard to believe that banks & credit unions could a place for meaningful grassroots innovation. Even crazier was…
Four short links: 6 Apr 2009
Baby nerds, evil URL shorteners, reasoned discussion, and the Government straps its Web 2.0 on:
- Books for Wee Nerds — Forget Pat the Bunny — your baby wants to Pat Schrodinger’s Kitty! Help baby search for subatomic particles and explore the universe. (via Tim’s tweets)
- On URL Shorteners — Joshua Schachter and Maciej Ceglowski on the downsides of URL shortening services like bit.ly et al.
- Mending The Bitter Absence of Reasoned Technical Discussion (Alex Payne) — We’ve come to accept that trying to have a reasonable discussion on the Internet is like insert any number of increasingly offensive metaphors here. Usenet, IRC, forums, blogs, and now media like Twitter have all been black-marked as houses unfit for reason to dwell within. And so we roll our eyes, sigh, and quietly accept the idiocy, the opportunism, and the utter disrespect for our peers and ourselves that is technical discussion on the Internet. This need not be the case. It is possible to have a reasoned technical discussion on the Internet. People do it every day, particularly in smaller online communities where social norms are easier to enforce. We can do it. (via SarahM
- GSA signs agreements with Web 2.0 providers — Flickr, YouTube, Vimeo, and blip.tv get agreements that make it legal for federal agencies to use those tools. Followup to my earlier cite of roadblocks to Web 2.0 tools for government use. (via Fiona’s delicious links)