Know what’s cool? Scrolling through your Twitter feed and seeing a post like this from a reporter you have an amazing amount of respect for:

Know what’s also cool? Seeing your first accepted submission on Slashdot for a great client (if you are a geek, you’ll understand how unbelievably cool this is):

Puzzled about it all?!?!  

Which brings me back to social media sites. When you’re giving the masses the ability to submit, vote on and promote any sort of content from across the entire web, what do you think they’ll do?

Sure, some people will want to know about the latest news in the Middle East while others are interested in Obama, and lots of people are are paying attention to Jerry O’Connell’s ‘Life in a SPEEDO’ wtf, howabout the economy, and other relevant or non-valuable information.  

And yeah, niche social media and social news sites will have a focus (Digg leans towards technology, BallHype is sports-oriented, and Linkswarm focuses on Pop Culture & bizarre news). 

But when you sift through the crap most of the general social media site that allows anyone to participate, you’re gonna see a lot of mainstream, general crowd pleasing stuff. Pictures you can easily glance at and laugh about stupid rants that have no discernible point and won’t make any sort of positive impact other than the fact that they made you smile or laugh for five minutes out of your busy, hectic Facebook day. 

Similarly, great content still exists on the web just as it’s always existed, and it’s easy to find it if you know where to look.

Don’t take a cursory look at social media and reduce a vast, entire Internet’s worth of content to the stuff you see being featured on LinkedIn, Stumbleupon, Facebook, and MySpace profiles, etc. 

Just because the “crappy” stuff now has a magnifying glass being held over it doesn’t mean it didn’t exist before or that the “good” stuff  is drastically declining.  That’s the beauty of the Internet–it’s a comprehensive resource created by humans, for  humans.  And it’s for every and all kinds of people–freaks, snobs, dummies, juveniles, women, men, geeks, liberals, conservatives, and porn stars.  

 Today, I’m wondering why you engage in social media marketing -  is it personal, on behalf of your company (or clients), or some combination of the two?

Why do you have social media accounts?

What do you use them for? 

Agreed, there are a great deal of social news sites on the internet, sometimes too many.  Most of them are dormant and no longer active or you forget about them and the usernames and passwords, perhaps it’s largely because they are poorly marketed and hence, never had an active community of users in the first place!  

Just my opinion but most of them are a waste of your time: they are riddled with spam and possibly will never attract a critical mass of viewers and participants so know your sites and don’t bother.   hmmmm                                                                                 

YOU don’t have alot of time on your hands. 

YOU want a community that gives you fresh news on topics that appeal to you. 

YOU want somthing that sends prospects and traffic while ‘branding‘ your website or business. 

YOU want a social news site with a long term return on your investment! 

Here’s my TOP  5 General Social News Websites  in no particular order.. 

1. Reddit-popular social news website with a large user base. Covers a wide range of news. Includes several topical sections called subreddits, which focus on specific topics like programming, science, politics and business.

2. Digg - the largest and most popular social news website on the internet. Covers all topics including politics, entertainment, technology and general news. Includes a separate video and image section.

3. Propeller – A social news site that covers all topics from technology to politics and entertainment. Operates in a similar fashion to Digg.

4. Fark – A community news site which allows users to comment on news articles. User submitted links will be posted on the main page once they are approved by the administrators.

5. Slashdot – primarily a tech news site, Slashdot also covers topics like books, games, politics and entertainment. Users can submit stories and they may be published after editors approve it. A popular site that can send a large amount of traffic.

But don’t take my word for it try them yourself!

Followup to that story a couple weeks ago about SSL being eminently hackable by a man-in-the-middle attack.  It seems real.  Its the end of everything – the internet is falling.  Let’s all buy huge purses (schwing) for our soon to come legions of SecureID Dongles.  Feel free to get a European Carry-All.

Seriously, there’s only a few days left to use SSL in public.

Have a nice day.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement negotiations continue in a few hours as Seoul, Korea plays host to the latest round of talks.  The governments have posted the meeting agenda, which unsurprisingly focuses on the issue of Internet enforcement [UPDATE 11/4: Post on discussions for day two of ACTA talks, including the criminal enforcement provisions].  The United States has drafted the chapter under enormous secrecy, with selected groups granted access under strict non-disclosure agreements and other countries (including Canada) given physical, watermarked copies designed to guard against leaks.http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4510/125/

WTF?  Wake up, there is no transparency and we are about to be held to a standard that almost prohibits free speech.  As an author, we do our best to provide proper credits for anything we cite as a source.  We would hope that spammers and authentic writers do the same for us, and usually they do for fear of being held accountable in a lawsuit.  Click on the disclosure tab at the top to see how we have tried to cover our a$$.

“On the international front, it provides firm confirmation that the treaty is not a counterfeiting trade, but a copyright treaty.”  

“A U.S.-drafted chapter on Internet use would require ISPs to police user-generated content, to cut off Internet access for copyright violators,  and to remove content that is accused of copyright violation without any proof of actual violation. The chapter also completely prohibits DRM workarounds, even for archiving or retrieving one’s own work.” writes http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/copyright_treaty_leaked_trouble_for_isps_and_in.php

In the U.S. you are innocent until proven guilty, but this may usurp everything you have ever learned about properly citing your sources and in the process limit your free speech.  Say nothing of fines and threats of imprisonment.

The leaks suggest that countries who sign up to the U.S promoted plan would have to force ISPs to proactively police copyright on user-generated content, cut off those accused (or face liability), and put “graduated response” clauses in customer contracts. An example of a graduated response is France’s “three strikes and you’re out” law. There, you get two warnings if caught sharing music or movies, then you’re banned for up to two years. http://gizmodo.com/5396757/secret-copyright-treaty-details-leak-isps-worldwide-to-become-copyright-cops 

Two years without the Internet?  Tsk, tsk- as if someone who broke copyright law couldn’t walk into an Internet cafe in Paris, Korea, Russia or the middle of butt fcuk Egypt to log on.  Good luck with that enforcement.  $hit, America can’t keep the illegal immigrants out and we are expected to believe in the Internet police?  We still believe in Santa, because if you don’t believe- you don’t receive.

Just how much control does President Obama seek?  Prohibiting free speech further erodes every citizen’s right and enhances government control over yet another aspect of our life. 

Best if all- ““The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama’s administration refused to disclose due to ‘national security’ concerns, has leaked. It’s bad.” You can read the original leaked document or the summary. If passed, the internet will never be the same. Thank goodness it’s hidden from public scrutiny for National Security. via http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/11/04/144240/Secret-Copyright-Treaty-Leaks-Its-Bad-Very-Bad

If and when this thing gets signed, duly note that we have properly credited the excerpted quotes.  Just in case the ping and link from the photo doesn’t work, it is from http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/archives/2006/Jun/ .  We’ll even take it a bit farther in the interest of disclosure- they sell T-shirts with slogans at  http://www.sharingmachine.com/ and would you look at their disclosure-”You may display TFD/MTTS/ND comics on your website, blog, Myspace, Livejournal, etc. as long as you link back to www.toothpastefordinner.com / www.marriedtothesea.com / www.nataliedee.com. The box marked “Cut/paste this HTML code” next to every comic does this for you. “  We believe we are in full compliance of the laws of the U.S.A. and graciously meet the requests of the site owners.

We’re so broke over the U.S. economic stimulus package there isn’t anything left to sue us over.  Maybe a 5 year old monitor and a keyboard with Swine Flu germs.  We can’t even afford the cool t-shirts from www.toothpastefordinner.com!

The Federal Trade Commission today (10.5.09) announced that it has approved final revisions to the guidance it gives to advertisers on how to keep their endorsement and testimonial ads in line with the FTC Act. http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2009/10/endortest.shtm 

Blogs are a blessing and a curse in the world of advocacy. With so many different voices floating around, it’s easy to get caught up in a piece of support that may not be appropriately accurate. writes Who links to me at http://wholinkstome.com/blog/ftc-regulations-on-bloggers/

Blog while you can. BTW, every www.gov site you visit – your own ISP is logged as a permanent record.  This, while the White House can barely keep track of it’s in person visitor logs.

Zombies: fun until you become one.

In a recent article cited on Slashdot, the author argues that zombies, like godzilla, adapt depending on the prevailing technological fear of the day.

a) I don’t think this applies just to tech fears – all sorts of unexplained phenomena find themselves rewritten into each age – ghosts, golems, aliens (always topical) and such. X-Files is great at doing this. b) Fun things also have changed their tunes. Spiderman was in one incarnation bitten by a radioactive spider, reflecting the Cold War era into which he was created; later on, Spidey was bitten by a genetically modified spider. Purist that I am, I preferred radioactive Spiderman.
One of the interesting trends in bringing characters like Iron Man to screen is having to do away with the references to Soviet arch nemeses such as the Crimson Dynamo, and in choosing whether to offend Muslims in employing Muslim fanatical terrorists in the plot. A number of movies and TV shows have had the bad guys re-written, out of fear of alienating Muslim viewers, the majority of whom, understandably, are sick and tired of seeing themselves portrayed in this one-dimensional, negative light. Fact remains however that they (the terrorists) ARE the bad guys of the age – so are the moviemakers really doing justice to their overall audience when they make up some mumbo-jumbo fanatical environmental terrorists instead? In 24, there were normal Muslims loyal to their adopted country, and there were Muslim fanatics. That’s more like it.

Seen on Slashdot about Cloud Computing:

You’re missing something more important here; it allows companies to shift costs from capital equipment to operating expenses which is HUGE from a business standpoint.

Slashdot; news for nerds. Stuff that matters

Description

Slashdot is the ‘Daily Planet’ for the technology community. We provide our readers with a ritualistic daily dose of technology news, culture and humor. Our fan base is an insatiably loyal, nearly zealous, audience dialed into every aspect of the technology world. For over ten years, the content on Slashdot has remained peer driven, straight from the source, and relatively unfiltered, giving a heightened sense of overall trust, quality and edge to Slashdot. We’ve redefined the standard by which similar sites are judged.

Link For More … or Here

Researchers in CSAIL’s Robust Robotics Group have developed a robotic helicopter with an on-board camera and laser scanner that is capable of flying inside buildings or other GPS-denied environments to map the local environment.

Although the video of the helicopter (below) talks about search-and-rescue and civil engineering applications, some people have been skeptical. A commenter on Slashdot noted, “It brings somewhat scary reminders of Minority Report to my head. How long till I see one of these chasing me down a dark alley?” Yet another commenter on TechTV wondered, “Cool, but can it kill zombies?”

This is about:

Follow the reader: filtering comments on slashdot – C Lampe, E Johnston and P Resnick

A really good article after the earlier one on Slashdot by (mostly) the same authors!

In this paper, the authors tried to reduce the friction involved in selecting elaborate filters to make finding useful and interesting stuff from comments to a story lesser by using the settings and preferences of those users who have gone through the effort of setting these up. However, changing preferences of a user without his (“his”: for reason cited in the paper) knowledge could be harmful (or “considered harmful?” no!). Instead, an recommender approach could be tried and made visible to users at little friction: “Hey you! We think that these filter settings are more useful for you based on what others do? Wanna use them? Yes | No” and one click on the Yes and the system knows that this particular user is receptive to adaptation.

An interesting reference is made in this paper: Miller G.A. “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some  limits on our capacity for processing information” (published in 1956, cited 8586 times!!), which has a follow up titled “The magical number seven: Still magical after all these years?” published in 1994. Should we have another one after the Internet age titled “The magic number seven: Still still magic after all these years?” ? May, be!

Kuulduste kohaselt on Nintendo järgmise põlvkonna kaasaskantav mänguseade tuginemas Nvidia Tegra platvormile. Esimesena jõudis Tegra platvormil riistvarast just septembris välja Microsofti Zune HD. Platvorm on mõeldud nutitelefonidele ning telefonide ja arvutite vahele jäävatele seadmetele. Platvormi jooksutab ARM protsessoril tuginev raud, millel Geforce´i graafikakaartide tehnoloogial tuginev graafika tuum ja HD videoprotsessor, mis võimeline välja andma 1080p väljundit (Full HD). See raud annab küll Sony PSP’le silmad ette, kuid Nintendo TS nime all jõuab toode turule ilmselt alles 2010. aasta sügisel.

Põhjalikumalt Slashdotist.

For those of you who haven’t been following the TI signing key wars, you can read it up through recent ticalc.org posts or by searching “TI” on slashdot.org

Basically, I think it’s my turn to post the signing keys, and because I’m not an EFF client, I don’t have to wait 13 days (at time of post)

The signing keys are on the sidebar for now, with the whole thing getting its own page soon (but I’m too lazy right now), and here’s why I can do this:http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/10/13/2330247/EFF-Warns-TI-Not-To-Harass-Calculator-Hobbyists?art_pos=1

All I say to the DMCA and TI right now: We Won! <:P

Comment your joy for the win! I ignore the DMCA!

This post is about the paper:

Slash(dot) and burn: distributed moderation in a large online conversation space – C Lampe and P Resnick

I think Slashdot’s moderation works in the case of Slashdot pretty well (as analyses from the paper show). From every such finding I try to see if other venues where moderation is required can use some of these findings and adopt the methods used in Slashdot to their benefit.

In open content communities, there are two ways of contributing information: contribute > review/moderate > publish (maybe) and contribute > publish > review/moderate (maybe). Research has shown that for communities that work towards producing artifacts of lasting value, neither is better than the other in the long run. For other types of communities that are based more on on-demand sharing of information (like IRC or Q&A sites), this may not be true. On IRC channels (and also in several bulletin board systems), system operators lay down rules and regulations about how to behave. Note that these are just guidelines and there are some places, which go to the extent of a defensive trick — to moderate all content that contain certain words or phrases. Thus, we are looking at two ways of hitting at moderation — automated system way and social way. In the automated way, the system automatically detects if some content is nasty with some confidence and in the social way, this activity is farmed out to moderators and meta-moderators.

I think the optimal way lies in the correct symbiosis of these two ways, and the authors of this paper hit at that in their proposals. Related question: To what extent does social security match up to automated system security? In other words, if we had to design a system equipped with quality/security based on computer algorithms and distributed social abilities of people, what mix would be the ideal?

I really enjoy reading these stories and looking at pictures that other people may have stumbled upon.  Although not everything may be pleasant to read, I still find it interesting.  An example of a story that wasnt exactly pleasant but was eye opening was the story of a preacher killing a prostitute.  Arent preachers supposed to be a holy?  You know, doing work for God and such?  You really cant judge a book by its cover, or so the saying goes.

Another story that I stumbled upon was about a big fat black lady. Apparently some lady had an error with her receipt from a gas station.  She went back and the gas clerk gave her a receipt and in order to identify who he gave 10$ back to be wrote “big fat black lady.” The woman claims to have understood the “black lady” part but not the “big fat” part.  I saw pictures and shes damn fat as hell. How the hell could she not understand the “big fat” part? Talk about ridiculous denial.

Lots of people these days are sneaky as hell. Take this grandma for example. How many times have you heard of an elderly woman robbing a bank…twice? I really dont have much to say to this.  Shes got some balls though.

Attached are pictures non relevant to this blog post, I just thought it was interesting.

Apple üllatab ühe uue võimalusega – nimelt kasutab uuendatud iPod touch Broadcom 802.11a/b/g/n traadita võrgu kiipi, see tähendab suuremat kiirust ja võimalust Touchi kasutada seadet tõsiselt võetava võrgumeediakeskusena uute ruuterite piirkonnas. iPod Touch toetab küll vaid ühe vooga N-Wifit.

Põhjalikumalt Slashdotis.

After reading my previous post “I want to build a spaceship” I can see that it was written very optimistically. It was nice to read it again now and be reminded of my extremely difficult, yet ambitious and some what cheerful goal. To tell you the truth I haven’t done much study in any of the areas related to my goal, much of which I attribute to my laziness and poor self motivation.

So if I haven’t been studying this whole time what have I been doing? I have begun reading the novel “Halo: First Strike” by Eric Nylund. I’m a fan of the Halo series (Both the book’s and the video games) and have previously read “Halo: Contact Harvest” and “Halo: The Fall of Reach”, both of which I thought were excellent reads and really add value to the Halo universe. The book I am currently reading is just as good a read as the previous two were. I recommend it highly.

Of course, I haven’t spent all my time reading. A good portion of my time is spent surfing the Internet. Admittedly I think I waste too much time on the internet looking at useless things – “Useless things” being just about every link that pops up on social networking sites like Digg, Slashdot and Reddit. I also waste a great amount of time in mainly pointless discussions on forums. Though I believe these some what pointless discussions to have some incremental value I don’t think I should waste as much time as I do on them.

I have yet to start seriously studying for a future career in Aerodynamics. This post will serve as a reminder to me not to waste so much time on social networking sites and web forums and to really start doing some serious real world study.

slashdot.org writes: “Security giant Symantec claims to have found the public release of source code for a Trojan that targets Skype users. Trojan.Peskyspy is spyware which records a voice call and stores it as an MP3 file for later transmission. An infected machine will use the software that handles audio processing within a computer and save the call data as an MP3. The file is then sent over the internet to a predefined server where the attacker can listen to the recorded conversations.”

I wonder why slashdot has not referred to the Trojan. Because hacking helps security, I will share the trojan with you.

A Swiss programmer wrote the code and made the source available at his blog Megapanzer. He is also hosting another Trojan (Minipanzer) that dumps sensitive information from the victim’s machine and sends to a predefined e-mail address. The Trojan is, till the writing of this post, not identified by Symantec AV.

To protect yourself against such a Trojan, always be cautious about executable files you download from the internet. A personal Firewall could also be able to block the Trojan’s attempt to connect to the SMTP server to send the e-mail.

Learn how to generate a package with Minipanzer here.

No! It is not FFS. It’s FSF. It stands for Free Software Foundation.

It’s “Free” as in Liberty, noat as in free beer.

As much as I believe that there are a lot of Hippies out there involved in the Free Software Foundation, I still wonder why I’m making this very statement.

Let’s get to the main story. As I read an RSS item from Slashdot (lots of Hippies are frequenting this site), one really caught my short attention span. Well because it is on the top of the RSS feed and the only unread items at that moment. I was previously offended by the troll-behavior of Microsoft P.R. team (Paul Thurrott, Ed Bott and  Mary Jo Foley with the addition of Randall C. Kennedy) as described by Tom Reetsman. By the way, Reetsman (via The Small Wave) just posted his take on Thurrott’s rants against anything that is not Microsoft; specifically Apple. Well, at least Thurrott has one loyal supporter (an accomplice *cough*) defending everything Thurrot said and attacking the non-Microsoft company (namely Apple in this article).

Oh where was I? I told you my attention span was short.

Free Software Foundation, Inc. has created a site titled “Windows 7 Sins – The case against Microsoft and proprietary software.”
http://windows7sins.org/

Don’t warroy Apple haters, they mentioned “proprietary software.” Apple does make proprietary software, therefore guilty by association. I bet that Thurrott is trying hard to make himself look neutral by attacking other companies that make “proprietary softwares.” We all know that Thurrott lives off Microsoft’s business model.

I prefer to slack than copying and pasting the arguments brought up by FSF. I get the message, but I do not blindly agree to every single point they make. I do take advantage of many things the Open Source Community have to offer in the past and present. I am pretty sure that it will be a similar situation in the future. I do also believe that propriety was born out of necessity. I don’t mind proprietary software as long as we have other alternatives. I’m pretty sure that  Google has some kind of proprietary software. I still use Google as my main search engine; Microsoft can Bing themseleves.

OK, I opted not to slack as much by echoing FSF’s argument points:

1. Poisoning education
2. Invading privacy
3. Monopoly behavior
4. Lock-in
5. Abusing standards
6. Enforcing Digital Restrictions Management (DRM)
7. Threatening user security

If you feel compelled to say that there are other companies also guilty of the sins, then feel free to tell FSF about it.

To loosely quote MacBreak Weekly panel, Apple and Steve Jobs would be worse than Microsoft if they had the monopoly.

Well, I definitely need to get some sleep, no wonder this turns into a rant.

P.S. EFF – I just feel like saying it at this moment.

Overclockers are always trying to come up with new, colder, and quieter ways to keep their PCs cool. [gigs] was so dedicated to this, he decided to lay 6 meters of copper pipe to use as a radiator in his new house’s foundation. As of now, the foundation is laid (copper pipes and all), and the forum posts come complete with finished slab pics, though there is no house to speak of yet.

[via Slashdot]

Get the world's knowledge from your laptop!

“Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That’s what we’re doing.”

-    Jimmy Donal “Jimbo” Wales, Co-founder of   Wikipedia

Quoted in Robin “Roblimo” Miller, “Wikimedia Founder Jimmy Wales Responds,” Slashdot (2004-07-28)

Also by Wales..

“We help the internet not suck.”

RSS: A good idea at the time but there are better ways now | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com.

I completely understand that Twitter and Facebook and the power of social networking is that you essentially crowd source the credibility and usefulness of information.  Look at another great tool Digg, it allows users to find information and digg up or digg down the content.  The problem I find with social networking is that our culture honestly hasn’t caught up with the power of social networking.

For example, people have lost all sense of netiquette if they ever had any at all.  Look up random digg or slashdot posts and read how users will treat each other and show little to no respect towards each other.  Maybe that will change as online identity ceases to be so anonymous, but the reality is that it happens today, and I don’t think you can just attribute it to script kiddies and over-stimulated gamers.

Finally, people will always have better things to do with their lives than keep up with the latest twitter trend or facebook update.  It’s called living their lives, so if that means they just turn on the tv and have the news presented to them (with all the editorial that comes along with that) I think people will be just fine with that.

Estic fent recerca sobre les comunitats Socials y les formes de compartir-ho tot per internet.

Les idees es poden compartir de moltes maneres i en molts formats… cada vegada més pàguines inverteixen en proporcionar un servei complet de publicació i contacte amb el món virtual.