Mick Darling's posterousAll my blogging in one spot. (mostly)Filed under: readerRedsn0w Update Fixes iBooks Crashes on Jailbroken Devices [Jailbreak]
iOS: (Jailbroken) If you have a jailbroken iOS device, you might have noticed that iBooks either crashes when you try to launch it or struggles to properly display books you purchased from Apple. A new version of the jailbreak tool Redsn0w solves the problem. More »
Obama to host first Google+ Hangout tonight at 5:30PM
Barack Obama is no stranger to social networks, but Google+ is still relatively new territory for him (and everyone else for that matter). The president doesn't seem afraid of mixing it up with the online riffraff, though, and will be hosting his very first Hangout tonight at 5:30pm ET. He'll be answering questions submitted via YouTube and selected by Google based on viewer rating. Sadly (or, perhaps, mercifully) this won't be a public free-for-all. Obama will be joined by five of his fellow Americans, but there won't be a rotating cast of random folks popping in and out of the group video chat queueing up clips of Maru. Hit up the source link to watch it live later this afternoon.
Obama to host first Google+ Hangout tonight at 5:30PM originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Jan 2012 13:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink The Verge | White House (Google+), CNN | Email this | Comments
from Engadget http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/30/obama-to-host-first-google-hangout-tonight...
UCLA Professor Says Conventional Wisdom on Study Habits Is All Washed Up
An anonymous reader writes "Taking notes during class? Topic-focused study? A consistent learning environment? According to Robert Bjork, director of the UCLA Learning and Forgetting Lab, distinguished professor of psychology, and massively renowned expert on packing things in your brain in a way that keeps them from leaking out, all are three are exactly opposite the best strategies for learning."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. Why Twitter’s New Policy is Helpful for Free-Speech Advocates
I often criticize companies on this blog so I want to take a moment to recognize Twitter for a model policy and explain why these should be the kind of practices that I hope other Internet companies follow. In my opinion, with this policy, Twitter is fighting to protect free speech on Twitter as best it possibly can. (It also fits with its business model so I am not going to argue they are uniquely angelic, but Twitter does have a good track record. Twitter was the only company which first fought the US government to protect user information in the Wikileaks cas,e and then informed the users when it lost the fight. In fact, Twitter’s transparency is the only reason we even know of this; other companies, it appears, silently caved and complied.) Twitter’s latest policy is purposefully designed to allow Twitter to exist as a platform as broadly as possible while making it as hard as possible for governments to censor content, either tweet by tweet or more, all the while giving free-speech advocates a lot of tools to fight censorship. Let’s look at the policy. 1- The policy is narrower than before. Previously, when Twitter would take down content when forced to do so by a court order, it would disappear globally. Now, it will only be gone in the specific country in which the court order is applicable. This is a great improvement. 2- The policy is realistic–and non-realistic policies are not better as they won’t work. The idea that Twitter can just ignore court orders everywhere is not only unrealistic, it would result in more countries to try to block Twitter completely–or make it accessible only via proxies and thus greatly restrict its power. The Internet is not a “virtual” space, and cyberspace is not a planet which can float above all jurisdictions forever. In this move, Twitter is acknowledging this fact while complying within the bare minimum framework. 3- The policy is transparent. Blocked tweets will be shown as “blocked” along with the blocking country. This is excellent! This level of transparency should be the model for all Internet companies. Companies should not remove content globally; rather they should do so in as few jurisdictions as possible with as much notice as possible. (for a negative example, check out the story of how Blogger iscensoring Egyptian activist Ramy Raoof’s post on brutality by security forces in Egypt. In that case, Ramy’s content is blocked globally and the post just *disappeared* without a clear indication of the censorship). 4- The policy provides tools for free-speech advocates. Twitter will publish list of blocked tweets, along with links to the original tweet –so everyone who is not at that particular country can see what it’s about–as well as a copy of the court order or enforceable takedown notice athttp://chillingeffects.org/twitter. Free-speech advocates have a transparent and powerful tool. 5- The policy is not made hard to circumvent. Twitter helpfully included instructions on how to change your country (“manually override” the country setting which is determined by IP). I don’t know about you, but does this sound like Twitter is caving? Also, obviously, Tor users and proxy users will be able to access the content fairly easily. 6- Twitter spokespeople have repeatedly said they will only block content in “In the face of a valid and applicable legal order.” This is a good standard and I don’t think any company can get around this in jurisdictions where they have physical presence; nor is it clear that they should. Of course, we all need to be watching carefully to ensure that they do so and not just cooperate with governments based on “requests.” I suspect this policy will cause some governments to continue to block Twitter on the whole because it doesn’t make it easy for governments to block content (they have to at least follow some level of procedure) and it creates a “Streisand effect” on censored tweets Twitter can’t fight all free speech battles by itself; and it can’t change laws or governments around the world, nor can it ignore issues of jurisdiction. In particular, if faced with a court order that requires Twitter to identify dissidents in a country where torture or severe repression is in place, I hope Twitter first makes this as public as possible, and then choses to pull out of that country rather than comply (as Yahoo did in the shameful case of Wang Xiaoning and others in China – and some these people remain in prison after almost a decade). There is a lot more to be said about the dangers of centralization, the emergence of corporate platforms as larger and larger portions of our political and social commons, and the conflicts between control, profit motives, and free and civic speech these recent developments raise. I don’t want to sound like I am happy to trust a few corporations and that’s it. On the contrary, I’ve repeatedly tried to warn against these dangers. All that said, I don’t think it is helpful if we don’t recognize a good policy when we see one. In this particular policy, Twitter has done everything it can do to help free-speech advocates around the world except deliver coffee and bagels in the morning. This is a model of how Internet companies should behave. I hope Twitter practices this policy as it outlined, and practices maximum transparency and minimum compliance with restrictive laws. Editor’s note: Zeynep Tufekci is part of BostInno’s Insider network. This post first appeared on her personal blog and was re-published with her permission. from BostInno http://bostinno.com/2012/01/29/why-twitters-new-policy-is-helpful-for-free-sp...39 New Digital Media Resources You May Have MissedBeen away from Mashable for a few days? Here’s something that’ll get you caught up in a flash: it’s our weekly roundup of Mashable features. Look at all the coolness you missed: We have tips for the transition into Facebook Timeline, tricks for improving your productivity via Google Calendar and Safari and links to the most popular memes. We’ve covered social networking in the workplace, using networks for social good and even using plugins to help you get the old Facebook back. So if you wanted to catch up on the best of our digital media resources, you’ve come to the right place: Editor’s Picks
Social Media
For more social media news and resources, you can follow Mashable’s social media channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook. Business & Marketing
For more business news and resources, you can follow Mashable’s business channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook. Tech & Mobile
For more tech news and resources, you can follow Mashable’s tech channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook. More About: digital media, features, roundup Hugelkultur Can Create Irrigation-Free Garden Beds [In Brief]
If your yard is big enough that you might have a felled tree from time to time due to lightning or winter storms, you may wonder how you can put the wood to good use. Most people who don't regularly heat with wood just post an ad on Craigslist for free wood if someone picks it up. Instead consider using the wood to form the backbone of a type of gardening bed known as Hugelkultur, that is, burying wood in your garden bed to gain many benefits including eliminitating irrigation. More »
Engine Advocacy Turns Tech Nerds Into Political ExpertsHow do you turn technology nerds into political experts? That’s the question being asked by Engine Advocacy, a group dedicated to getting “tech startups, entrepreneurs and technologists” involved in shaping public policy. The goal of Engine Advocacy is “to give entrepreneurial people and businesses a voice in the Washington policy arena that they haven’t before,” according to co-founder Michael McGeary. The group has a stake in a variety of issues, including an open Internet, intellectual property rights, privacy laws, broadband access, spectrum reform and immigration reform. (Why immigration? Engine Advocacy wants a “startup visa” to make it easer for people to come to the U.S. to innovate.) Engine Advocacy has no registered lobbyists working for it. Instead, the organization seeks to teach Silicon Valley about Washington, D.C and to give technological innovators “action tools” for getting involved with public policy. “Most people realize it’s not good enough as an entrepreneur or startup CEO to take the feeling of ‘let me do my job,’” says McGeary. “I come from the political world, I’ve worked on a couple of campaigns and I’ve come to Silicon Valley and I’ve been heartened to talk to so many smart people that are saying ‘ok, let’s figure out how to do this so we don’t have to be passive all the time.’” McGeary says his organization is a “loosely formed coalition” that’s growing “quickly by the day.” The idea to start the organization came before SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (PROTECT IP Act) became the hot-button issues of the day, but according to McGeary, they were the sparks that “set the building on fire,” so to speak. “What we thought was a good idea in the Fall turned into ‘we have to do this right now.”
“What we thought was a good idea in the fall turned into ‘we have to do this right now,’” says McGeary. “[SOPA and PIPA] were a galvanizing moment.” Engine Advocacy isn’t just trying to educate tech innovators about Washington, it’s also doing the reverse. The organization is making an effort to educate politicians on technology and Internet issues. “We’ve met with several members of congressional staff,” says McGeary, singling out Sen. Moran of Kansas. “(Sen. Moran) and his staff are really committed to tech issues and wanting to get more education about them and trying to find ways to legislate in more productive ways. We’re young in the Senate, but together there’s power in injecting these two communities and I’ve been glad about that.” With SOPA and PIPA gone, what’s the next big fight for Engine Advocacy? We asked McGeary if ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) was on Engine Advocacy’s radar. “Yes, but it appears to be mostly complete at this point. We’ll keep our eye on it as it rolls out, however, to see what implications there are for tech business going forward,” he said. “We’re keeping our eyes on (SOPA and PIPA), of course, just in case they make a stunning, election-year comeback from being mortally wounded,” says McGeary. “Beyond that, we’re now taking some time to build and strengthen our organization and begin rolling out our legislative priorities for 2012, as well as beginning to develop campaign strategies looking toward the Fall. We’re looking at things like Startup Act and spectrum coming down the pike fairly quickly, but also beginning to beef up our web presence and policy research to be ready for the next fights as they come along.” Do you think it’s a good idea to get tech experts and innovators involved with the public policy process? Sound off in the comments below. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, PashaIgnatov More About: Politics, technology 7 Big Privacy Concerns for New Facebook and the Open GraphIt’s not always clear how Facebook apps interact with the data you share on the social network. Are they allowed to broadcast it? Sell it? Compile it in a way that you never intended? “When you turn all Platform applications off, your User ID is no longer given to applications, even when your friends use those applications,” says a portion of Facebook’s privacy policy. “But you will no longer be able to use any games, applications or websites through Facebook. Simply, should you choose not to share with apps at all, they are taken away from you. If you want to use some, but limit their functionality, you have to carefully customize your privacy settings in order to ensure your information is used appropriately. With the Open Graph, which can push any information to your Facebook page without explicit permission each time, it becomes more of an imperative. Here are seven things you may not realize that Facebook knows, and is using to interact with your friends or advertisers. Concerned about what you share on the social network? Be sure to check the Apps You Use in the Privacy Tab to ensure that you have full control of your privacy in a way that makes you feel comfortable. 1. Where You’ve BeenYou’ve always kept your location up to date on Facebook, ensuring everyone knows when you change cities — but you’re not interested in geotagging. Watch out, because your exact location can still be picked up by Facebook and broadcasted. One of the more prominent design features in Facebook’s new Timeline is the “Maps” feature, which gathers the meta data from a user’s location and prominently displays check-ins, life events, photos, and the like on the map. The issue is, for those who aren’t necessarily keen on sharing discrete location details, this feature is virtually unavoidable. According to Facebook’s privacy policy: “We receive data from the computer, mobile phone or other device you use to access Facebook. This may include your IP address, location, the type of browser you use, or the pages you visit.” This data is collected every time, even when a friend of yours has GPS turned on and tags you in a picture she’s uploading from her mobile phone. Even if you’re stringent about your whereabouts not making it to a highly visible plane, Facebook has already gathered data from you retroactively, ensuring that every time you’ve changed your city location — or listed your home town– it will show up on the map as well. 2. What You’re Listening To
You just downloaded Spotify and you’re really excited to get started. You signed up and were asked to link to Facebook before launching the app, so you clicked the boxes and everything seems ready. But don’t click play on that MC Hammer track just yet… Since September, Spotify has required that new users sign in through Facebook, thanks to a partnership forged after the music giant hit the U.S. Essentially, anytime a regular Spotify user turns on the app and clicks play, whether via desktop or through mobile, the app can beam information right into Facebook and broadcast it to friends without prior notice. In response to major backlash, Spotify now includes a “Private Listening” mode, which blocks sharing immediately to Facebook. However, it will turn off after a restart or an extended period of time. The only way to circumvent the compulsory posting is to turn it off permanently in both places. Spotify’s desktop app does have a “turn off publishing to Facebook” within its settings, but the only way to ensure posting does not occur is to revoke Spotify’s publishing abilities within Facebook apps. 3. When You’re CreepingThat girl you met at the event you went to last week. Your ex from college. Your worst enemy from middle school. Odds are, they’re all on Facebook, and you can’t resist the urge to creep. Just remember that Facebook is watching, too. Naturally, anything you do on Facebook is seen and gathered by Facebook, and creeping on people is no exception. Facebook specifically tracks all clicks done within its platform in order to better tailor an experience for the user. Do you ever wonder why certain people show up in your feed, while others are hardly ever reported on? That’s your creeping doing its work. Visit your frenemy’s page enough times, and he or she will end up gracing your feed more often than you may like. Don’t worry, Facebook does not specifically share this data with other users, though it will assume that this person is important in your life. Marking someone as a VIP can lead to their appearances more often in your advertisements or apps in addition to the extra face time on the feed. 4. Where You RunSocial running is all the rage these days, and you’re ready to load up your iPhone with RunKeeper, connect it to Facebook and get to stepping. But there’s more, and it has to do with that sneaky little GPS… Runkeeper is one of the poster children for Facebook’s new “frictionless” user experience. A social network for avid (and aspiring) runners, Runkeeper packs sophisticated technology usually reserved for GPS watches and other athletic gear into a handy iPhone application and has the option of linking material to Facebook. Except, with the Open Graph, linking gives companies an opportunity to simply push all of the info that they collect into a user’s Timeline. And in this case, that means valuable GPS data. Say that you go on a run with Runkeeper around the park. The GPS data routes the run you made and then pushes it to Facebook so your friends can see where you’ve been and for how long. This may not be much of a problem for you, but what if one day you forget to turn off Runkeeper and go to work? Anywhere you go from that point on is at risk of becoming common knowledge among your social circle, which can be unnerving at best and dangerous at worst. Runkeeper does a great service for those motivated for fitness, but in participating in the Open Graph, the information is fair game. 5. Your Saturday Night PlansYour local bar is having a comedy night, and you have to RSVP on Facebook to get on the guest list. But when you click “Attending,” your plans can be broadcast to your social network — whether you realize it or not. One of the trickier features of Facebook is the “sponsored stories” section, which is a particular form of advertising. Companies can sponsor particular Facebook actions, called “stories,” that double as advertising for a brand. However, this also means that your information could be used as an advertisement for another brand. “Sponsored Stories” are a possibility every time you like a brand or location or respond positively to a public event. When you do this, companies can tap into your friends and let them know that you like or are attending an event — with the hopes of getting them involved, too. Liking a brand or attending its event automatically makes your information available for brand ambassadorship, and you can become an advocate for the event or the brand without implicitly signing up. 6. When You’ve Slacked on Your Diet
You have a Fitbit and you’re ready to get your connected fitness in gear. You allow your account to connect with Facebook so you can broadcast your successes to friends and family, but the Open Graph does change things. Fitbit is not currently on Facebook’s list of fully-adopted Open Graph apps, but its potential (and partnership with Runkeeper) can create quite an issue for users who are concerned about privacy. The nuances of Facebook’s Open Graph mean that everything is done for the user as soon as permission is granted, rather than approving every singular action within an app. Combine that with an app that already makes those decisions for you, and the possibility of sharing information you actually don’t want to share is high. The key issue with Fitbit is that it already uploads very personal information automatically whenever the portable device is near its connected docking station. Combined with Open Graph, data could be broadcasted to friends without even logging into Facebook. 7. What News Articles You Just ReadA friend read an article that catches your eye through the Washington Post Social Reader. You click on the title and realize that the app requires permission before linking to the article. You may think little of it and click through to the article, but Facebook watches as you keep reading. The main news app that has adopted Facebook’s Open Graph structure is the Washington Post Social Reader. You may have already seen the app in your News Feed, highlighting some articles read by friends that could be of interest to you. However, if you’re interested in one of the articles, you’re going to have to allow the app to access your personal information. That can be an inconvenience for some, but the real issue lies after you read that first article. Because of the app’s structure, you aren’t prompted whether you want to share a particular article with your peers. So, once you begin clicking around the Post’s website, all of your articles become fair game for posting onto someone else’s mini-feed. The result is, from that point forward, even without accessing the app directly through Facebook, your connection to your reading habits is already cemented and anyone can access it. More About: apps, Facebook, facebook open graph, features, mashable, Open Graph, privacy, trending On Selling Companies And The Startup Ecosystem Virtuous Cycle
The short answer is that while we do indeed have plenty of liquidity events tied around large technology companies from the west coast as acquirers, we could use more to ensure an even healthier ecosystem and that as such I think we should be thrilled to have more companies exit to the big tech companies of out west, not stressed. While there is one nuance about what we are missing today (particularly when it comes to web companies), overall this is a good thing. First, my take on the necessary virtuous cycle of the startup ecosystem: It starts with “founder material,” the engine of the entire machine. As a general rule, New England has always done well in producing founders but a macro trend which has helped us disproportionately in the last five years has been the plummeting age of the typical founder, a factor which plays very well in a university-rich geography. Whereas the 1980s saw the median founder coming out of a minicomputer company on the 128 riviera, today that founder is just as likely to be 22 and fresh out of MIT, Harvard or any of the sixty odd colleges and universities in Massachusetts alone. To get the engine started, most founders need a little fuel in the form of a few hundred thousand dollars, something which until this latest boom in seed activity was a weakness of our region, or more likely, a unique strength of Silicon Valley. Back in 2001 when the venture dollars dried up, the only place one could get money at this scale in Boston ($100-1000K) was from one of a few rather onerous angel groups. However, using the new StartupDataTrends (a very cool new tool I highly recommend you try out for what it achieves in terms of startup funding transparency), you can see the differences in average seed round amount raised and valuations below: Once the engine has started, the startups that find product/market fit then often go on to need scaling capital, the job of traditional early stage investors and a segment where New England has been over represented on a per capita basis for a long time, so we certainly have no problems there. Entrepreneurs may argue that VCs are too conservative or don’t get the Internet but it’s hard to argue that there are too few of us, and more importantly, not enough dollars in this geography.
While we’ve got some of those folks here (hidden away at companies like TripAdvisor, VistaPrint and Kayak), the density is too low for all of the interesting startups that need this type of talent. This is the one place where not having the big pole companies in the web (unlike say systems companies in networking and storage which we’ve got plenty of) has hurt us. Though again, time and success should fix this. Finally, a lot of liquidity is necessary to recycle founders (who will swing harder the next time), create new sources of startup capital, and most importantly, provide a way for startups that won’t ever be able to turn into billion dollar standalone companies to find a home, thereby releasing raw materials back to start the cycle. This last point on too much “selling out” was meant to be at the core of last night’s panel and my core argument was going to be that we need more not less of it and that by having companies like Google, Microsoft, VMWare, and Amazon, establish meaningful presences (not just sales offices) in Cambridge, we were likely to see more of this type of activity. I believe Scott Savitz said it best last night when he talked about the key metric being the number of “at bats” that we get as a region to create monster companies here. No matter how you think of it, accelerating this startup ecosystem virtuous cycle— be it in e-commerce, mobile adtech, infrastructure software, robotics, ed tech, or any other of our emerging tech clusters— can only help that particular statistic. Postscript: In a related sign of the virtuous cycle being accelerated, Brad had a very nice piece after his visit here this week on entrepreneurial density that is worth reading. from BostInno http://bostinno.com/2012/01/27/on-selling-companies-and-the-startup-ecosystem...Early Stage Venture Fund Launches at Harvard In Hopes of Keeping More Talent on the East Coast
Co-founded through close collaboration between venture capitalist Patrick Chung, academic and entrepreneur David Edwards, and scholar-turned-entrepreneur Hugo Van Vuuren, the Experiment Fund will provide seed capital to selected startups, set them up with SEAS faculty members and connect them with advisors from both Cambridge and Silicon Valley. They’ll make seed investments on a case-by-case basis, but do encourage on their website, “Contact us, and let’s talk.” Anyone can take advantage of the Fund, despite their University affiliation, as it’s designed to attract engineers, entrepreneurs and designers from various backgrounds and empower them to build ideas in three core areas: Information, Healthcare and Energy Technologies. Each new venture will receive up to $250,000, but the trio does plan on investing broadly on the East Coast. “Cambridge has always seeded and cultivated brilliant minds and entrepreneurs, and now they’ll have another reason to stay rooted in and draw strength from these fertile soils,” said Chung, who is co-head of New Enterprise Associates’ consumer and seed-stage investing practices, in a press release. Hugo Van Vuuren, a student at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, said, “The Fund is looking for smart and resourceful people, zealous full-time teams, and experiments in need of seed funding and hands-on help to get off the ground.” The team intends on adding more investors to their list soon, but have already granted money to a few companies, including Harvard-based Tivli, who spoke at today’s conference. To Harvard undergraduate Zachary Hamed, this will be “a huge leg up for Harvard in entrepreneurship.” Although it was emphasized this fund will help other schools, as well, like Babson, Boston College and MIT, students at Harvard will now be able to walk out of their class and into a nearby room to pitch their idea to a VC. “There was no seed fund to go to before,” Hamed said. “This will make the process of getting funding easier. It’s a huge step.” And this huge step could bring the city one step closer to retaining its talent and fostering future entrepreneurs. from BostInno http://bostinno.com/2012/01/27/early-stage-venture-fund-launches-at-harvard-i... |
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