Android – one step closer to freedom of communication

Monday, November 5th, 2007

Like most heavy cellphone users I have a love hate relationship with both the device and the wireless service. Love because it gives me freedom from a physical location and thus is an essential business enabler for entrepreneurs. Hate because it restricts my freedom in many ways that ...

Can the web help fight corruption?

Sunday, October 21st, 2007

Lessig turns his keen insight and trademark presentation style towards the analysis of corruption as he steps away from 10 years of focusing on intellectual property issues and their impacts on culture, creativity and innovation. I wish him luck as he will have the full force of the ...

The Web as operating system

Friday, October 19th, 2007

Alistair, who has been writing recently at GigaOM, puts together the most lucid synthesis I have seen on the topic of the "Web OS." Big Internet companies are making themselves the OS of the web 2.0 world. In addition to the fundamentals — operating a web application, storing data, handling logins ...

Taking ownership of information highways

Sunday, February 4th, 2007

Bob Frankston continues his exploration of alternative information infrastructure ownership. He wonders, with the media (copper wires, fiber optics and radio waves) essentially commodity, what do we get from services providers that we cannot more efficiently provide for ourselves? With absurdly high communications bills of late, I can't help but ...

Internet Black Holes

Sunday, January 14th, 2007

Reporters sans frontiers rally against "internet black holes" - sectors of the internet where liberty is severely restricted: This map is a tad simplistic, being more about black and white than shades of grey - and its the shades of grey that I think are particularly nefarious. That said, its a ...

We are the internet – so take back the internet!

Friday, December 22nd, 2006

Bob Frankston hits the "network neutrality" nail squarely on the head in his article "Our Internet!" We are the Internet...We don’t need be given “Internet” by a central authority because the defining principle is that we can and must connect from the edge rather than relying on carrier be it a ...

Intelligence 2.0

Monday, December 4th, 2006

The NYTimes has an interesting article (login required) about efforts in the US intelligence community to harness the power of "web 2.0" blogs, wikis and social networking in the interest of more efficient collaboration: Something had gone horribly awry, Burton realized. Theoretically, the intelligence world ought to revolve around information sharing. ...

Freeconomics and the copybot: consequences for intellectual property

Tuesday, November 28th, 2006

Chris Anderson of Long Tail fame "cheekily" coins freeconomics as shorthand for his more recent thesis on "economics of abundance". (I should mention that he does so with apologies to Freakonomics) Anderson points out how technology that was once scarce is fast becoming a cheap enough commodity to be offered ...

DMCA exceptions granted

Monday, November 27th, 2006

The 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a law in the United States which criminalizes technology which circumvents copyright. It has been widely criticized. Ed Felten at Freedom to Tinker reports some exceptions to the DMCA were recently granted: six exemptions were granted, the most ever: * Professors ...

Canadian Network Neutrality

Monday, November 6th, 2006

Canadian internet "watchdog" Michael Geist points out that there are forces at work threatening so-called "network neutrality" or as I prefer to frame the issue: internet freedom. Of particular concern is Videotron's president Robert Depatie who proves he just doesn't get it. Unfortunately what's scary is neither do many of ...