In the 1990s, nothing was more exciting than signing onto your AOL account and joining a chat room with people you may or may not have known to discuss everything from sports to movies to what happened on the newest episode of Friends last night. Although the pop-up chat room of the past has significantly, if not totally, died out, the concept has not. It is constantly changing along with our changing social media outlets and has basically transformed to a new genre of social media: Twitter. Our screen names of the past changed to Twitter handles and our chat rooms are now hashtags.
The concept of Twitter is simple: users have a maximum of 140 characters to tell their followers how they are feeling or what they are doing at that very moment. One of the features of a tweet is a hashtag, which is essentially a keyword that sticks your tweet into that specific category. For example, on July 7, I tweeted “pretty sure I’m more excited for the #olympics than I am for my birthday.” Once I sent that into the twitterverse, “#olympics” turned into a hyperlink, which means my followers could click on it and see every other tweet discussing the olympics, thus creating a chat room atmosphere among the twitter feed. Reality shows have also begun using hashtags as a way to encourage viewers to join the conversation. For example, the reality show Big Brother will sporadically flash a hashtag at the bottom of the screen for users to discuss the previous moment with each other on twitter. While watching the episode, you could tweet and use the hashtag #bigbrother and everyone tweeting using the same hashtag will be able to see what you wrote and tweet back at you. TV shows began using hashtags as a way to convince viewers to watch in real time, instead of setting up their DVRs to save for later. Kerry Jones explains this new phenomenon on Blueglass.com by simply stating “with on-screen hashtags, networks are tapping into existing conversations.” Most shows have an official hashtag so the networks can track the conversation. The hashtag is usually placed subtly in a corner so as not to annoy or distract the viewer. According to a survey by Yahoo and Nielsen, “86% of mobile phone owners use their phones while watching TV, and 40% are browsing or updating social networking sites.” As our social media usage rises, so does our ability to multitask. When Comedy Central hosted their roast of hotel tycoon Donald Trump, around 27,000 used the hashtag #TrumpRoast in only one hour, thus jumpstarting the use of hashtags in real time television. On April 29, 2011, the Royal wedding gained worldwide attention and CNN lured viewers to watch on their network by promoting the hashtag #CNNTV and picking random tweets to run on a crawl at the bottom of the screen throughout the broadcast. During the wedding, around 250 tweets rolled in per minute. While hashtags began appearing in major awards shows and sporting events, their popularity is steadily increasing and they are finding their way onto primetime television shows and onto millions of living room TV screens.
from BostInno http://bostinno.com/channels/from-screen-names-to-twitter-handles-chat-rooms-...
For fans of the Terminal, Mountain Lion brought some new command-line utilities. Perhaps the most notable is fdesetup, which Apple explains briefly: "fdesetup allows third-party management tools to enable FileVault, determine encryption status, capture and manage recovery keys, and add users to a FileVault-encrypted system as well as synchronize directory-based user authentication credentials with the local credentials for FileVault access."
Apple provides a 'man' page for fdsetup, but if you want more information about it, Rich Trouton at Der Flounder has a very thorough walk-through with a bunch of screenshots and excellent explanations. I'm definitely keeping this one in Pinboard for the inevitable day when I want or need to use fdsetup. I'm also glad to have a more low-level tool for working with FileVault.
I had written previously about the "hoops" which were necessary to disable certain users from being able to unlock the computer with FileVault. That process is now a lot easier.
But wait, there's more!
Patrix over at the Ask Different blog discovered several other new command-line utilities. Some of them are generic Unix utilities (pgrep and pkill) but there are also some OS X specific ones, including:
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caffeinate - prevent the system from sleeping on behalf of a utility
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serverinfo - determine server status (is this OS X Server, and, if so, are these things enabled)
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sharing - create share points for AFP, FTP and SMB services
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tccutil - manage the privacy database
See the original article for more details. Of these, caffeinate seems like the most interesting. I have used Caffeine, the free app from Lighthead Software, to keep my Mac awake at times, but being able to do it in shell scripts could definitely come in handy.
Still missing your favorite Unix utility?
If Mountain Lion still doesn't have your favorite utility, don't forget you have other options. I have used Rudix when I wanted precompiled binaries, and Homebrew when I want to make my own. Mostly these days I stick with Homebrew, which is regularly updated by a bunch of people, versus Rudix which has a smaller library and seems to be mostly the labor of love of one developer.
Others may prefer Fink or MacPorts; I have used both in the past but haven't kept up with them recently. Both of them appear to have been updated for Mountain Lion. New command line tools in Mountain Lion manage encryption, sleep and sharing originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 30 Jul 2012 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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from TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog http://www.tuaw.com/2012/07/30/new-command-line-tools-in-mountain-lion-manage...

Much rejoicing accompanied the news that Mountain Lion brought back the "Save As..." option (which had been taken away in Lion and replaced with the not-nearly-the-same-thing "Duplicate" command). Unfortunately, Save As was relegated to a sub-menu which could only be seen if you held down the Option key, or you could use the not-very-convenient keyboard shortcut Command+Shift+Option+S.
For some reason, that keyboard shortcut never worked for me, so I decided to remap it using System Preferences.
Since I am never, ever, ever going to use the "Duplicate" item, I decided that I would remap "Duplicate" to something else, and restore Command+Shift+S back to its rightful spot as "Save As..."
I went to System Preferences » Keyboard » Keyboard Shortcuts and selected "All Applications" on the right side. Then I clicked the plus-sign under the right column and added "Duplicate" for "All Applications" to be the keyboard shortcut Command+Shift+Option+D (aka "I am never going to use this shortcut and don't want to press it accidentally").

Then I did the exact same thing, except this time I used "Save As..." for the menu. Note that both "Save" and "As" must be capitalized, and you must use a proper ellipsis character at the end. On a Mac with the US-English keyboard, you can get this by holding down the Option key and typing a semi-colon.

Voilà! This will now work in every Mac application which has a Duplicate and/or Save As... menu. If an app does not have one of those menus, it will just ignore the keyboard assignment. You could also assign this for specific apps if you only want to use it in certain apps.
An unexpected but very pleasant side effect of making this change is that OS X makes the "Save As..." menu item visible again even without holding down the Option key.
Before (no Save As... visible):

After (welcome back old friend!):

Quite frankly, I think I would have paid $20 for this alone.
If you don't mind Apple's suggested keyboard shortcut for Save As... but would like it to show up on the menus, all you have to do is rename the Duplicate menu item (as described above). Once that was renamed, the "Save As..." menu item appeared. I only added the custom keyboard shortcut for that because I wanted it to respond to Command+Shift+S as it had always done before Lion. Get Save As back on Mountain Lion's File menu easily and without hacks originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sun, 29 Jul 2012 23:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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from TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog http://www.tuaw.com/2012/07/29/get-save-as-back-on-mountain-lions-file-menu-e...

NBC, already in hot water with fans over its coverage of the London Olympics opening ceremonies, just can't seem to catch a break. The broadcaster, which has chosen to tape-delay certain events, is catching heat from viewers upset after NBC broadcasters spoiled the outcome of the Michael Phelps - Ryan Lochte 400-meter individual medley showdown.
Instead of carrying the matchup live, NBC aired a taped interview with Phelps. After Lochte won the event by nearly 4 seconds with Phelps finishing a disappointing fourth, NBC Nightly News led with the surprising racing result before the event had aired on television. The hashtag #NBCsucks soon became a trending topic on Twitter, with fans t… Continue reading...
More About: Twitter, london, nbc, nbc olympics, olympics, trending 
from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2012/07/29/nbc-olympics-response/?utm_source=feedburner&u...
Are you a non-sports fan but know there's that one Olympic nut in your Twitter network who will be constantly posting pseudo analysis, lame jokes and failed bon mots for the next two weeks? Maybe you've got a friend who's on vacation and posting way too many Foursquare check-ins, or know someone who insists on live-tweeting every episode of The Bachelor.
It could be time to put them in the Twitter Doghouse. That's the name of a new app that lets users unfollow tweeps for scheduled periods of time to jokingly call out obnoxious behavior or seriously avoid Twitter-centric events of limited interest to the non-involved (SXSW, anyone?).
Twitter Doghouse was created by developers Elan Dubr… Continue reading...
More About: App, Twitter, apps 
from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2012/07/29/twitter-doghouse/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_me...
New submitter hugeinc sends this quote from an article by author Andrew Kessler:
"Next week, while we're all watching NBC, a nuclear-powered, MINI-Cooper-sized super rover will land on Mars. We accurately guided this monster from 200 million miles away (that's 7.6 million marathons). It requires better accuracy than an Olympic golfer teeing off in London and hitting a hole-in-one in Auckland, New Zealand. It will use a laser to blast rocks, a chemical nose to sniff out the potential for life, and hundreds of other feats of near-magic. Will these discoveries lead us down a path to confirming life on other planets? Wouldn't that be a good story that might make people care about science?" Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
from Slashdot http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/07/29/0021222/why-you-should-be-more-int...
I’m violating my first rule. I’m writing angry. But…
I love the olympics. I love sport. And the olympics, still, despite it all, seem to me an incredible distillation of sport’s dedication, intensity, joy, humanity, and drama. Whether it’s the higher order game theory playing out in the biking peloton, the slowly evolving drama of the marathon, the sheer primal athleticism of weighlifting, or the H2O-immersed VO2max test that is the 400m individual medley, I just can’t get enough of it.
But NBC insists on forcibly reminding me at every turn that the Games are also something else. Like college football players, the athletes are mere “content” in a much bigger game. In this case what amounts to a two week utopian experiment in Nationalist Corporatism. A frenzy of metal counts, extractive economics and mind numbing cultural absurdity – where countries are reduced during their introduction to an association with their biggest historical monster.
But you had to wait to hear it because Costa’s idiotic commentary was held on tape until NBC’s $1B worth of sponsors were ready for you to see it: PrimeMonetizationTime. So, a giant fence surrounds the proceedings, put there by the IOC, NBC, and Akamai, where even tweets are controlled and the biggest event on the planet is dribbled out in a maddening temporal shift. But even then we had to endure systematic editing to make sure no one in the Kingdom of TeaMerica might be offended by anything, or bored. It doesn’t have to be this way. This was such a lost opportunity to make it great.
I still haven’t seen the opening ceremony from Beijing (same reasons, same perp), and I missed the one last night too. Well, I didn’t miss it exactly. When my tweet stream started lighting up late yesterday afternoon with visions of giant babies and Voldemort and flying bicycles and all the other British trippiness I ran to my TV. Work can wait, I want to see this! But I was blocked at every turn. Like an Iranian dissident I finally managed via a secret proxy to get a glimpse. But it lasted only a moment before some well-compensated gatekeeper sussed it out and blocked my subversive stream. I couldn’t deal with the asymmetry of the commentary without the thing, so I just shut down Twitter.
Did you know that the in order to use the official iPhone and iPad apps from NBC to live stream events you have to subscribe to a particular set of cable companies, and furthermore you have to be subscribed to a short list of pay channels? The web is no more an open network. It has been reduced (and diminished) to mere media pipe that connects (only) to your monopoly owned app – It’s like the AT&T of old. And if that pipe doesn’t go to your TV, it also won’t go to your computer, tablet, or phone. That’s a fascinating take on net neutrality isn’t it? We’ll happily use other people’s networks to deliver content to our “roaming” subscribers, but we demand to be able to charge when those dastardly web companies deliver their stuff on our pipes.
 
Anyway, here’s the thing. I would happily pay $50 to access those streams for two weeks, assuming they were done well. But I’m not going to switch to Comcast from my current provider to get it. And it’s absolutely idiotic for Comcast/NBC to think I would. The Olympics last for two weeks, but that behemoth’s crap service is forever.
These guys run their media empire the way Chavez runs Venezuelan power companies. Provide crappy service and limit innovation but keep the cash coming to what is essentially an IoC chartered royal monopoly. They could make it great for everyone, an amazingly wonderful experience, but then they would have to worry about what creative destruction might do to their current benefactors.
But what if they thought about it differently? What might an open minded approach to the Olympic experience look like? If a well worn butt print in front of Comcast’s primetime-plasma-portal wasn’t a pre-req to the enjoyment of sport?
Instead of subverting the web, use it! Make the “Olympic Movement” a movement by creating a web of content and connections – stop trying to confine new media into the old one-to-many transmission model. Make every event available in real time to anyone with a web browser while making advertising possible (and viable) for a much wider range of companies. Sell apps that add context, content, and commentary around the events. Make it easy for fans that are in attendance to add their own content about the experience whether through specific apps written for the games or existing networks like Twitter. Design for a great multi-screen experience that makes the butt print model worth it. Partner with streaming services like Netflix to multiplex NBC’s single channel into as many as it takes to bring any event you might want to see to your television if that’s where you want to view it. Hell, I don’t know, I’ve only been thinking about this for five minutes and I already know I could create a hundred times better experience than these guys have.
Why am I so angry about this? I guess it’s because of a collision of value systems. The values implied by elite sport – intensity, commitment, integrity – are things worth emulating and when they are cast in contrast with the extractive, closed, corporatist, reactive values of the IoC and NBC the collision is just too much, at least for me. Such a massive fail.

from O'Reilly Radar - Insight, analysis, and research about emerging technologies http://radar.oreilly.com/2012/07/nbc-fail.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medi...
As education reinvents itself to keep up with emerging technologies, both inside and outside the classroom, we’re seeing an explosion of EdTech innovations of both tools and practices that change how students can learn. This infographic forecasts a handful of changes that will come into ubiquity over the next 30 years. Some of these changes in education technology are already starting to appear – mobile technologies for learning, for example, are already in use by the University of Phoenix, which makes sense because they cater to busy adults. Gamification and disintegration are both starting to crop up, especially in online learning platforms like Codecademy, but also in the emerging field of digital textbooks and assessment-driven learning, where the curriculum is dependent on a knowledge of current skill. Others are a little less predictable (“Reactive furniture”). Still, it’s a fascinating picture of what might be. Click the image for an easier-to-read size. 
Infographic by TFE Research and Michelle Zappa, via Envisioning Technology
from BostInno http://bostinno.com/channels/the-future-of-education-technology-infographic/
We all use email (except this guy). Most of us use it every day. Even if your job doesn’t come with other common technological denominators (Word processing software, phone, biometric iris scanners…), it probably does come with a yourname@company.com. Knowing this, I thought it would be interesting to look at how people in a variety of professions and stages in their career deal with email on the average day. Is it the driving force? Background noise? Somewhere in between? First up is David Beisel, a partner at seed-stage VC firm NextView Ventures. On his (excellent) blog GenuineVC, he writes about the culture and daily dealings of VCs and the startups that pitch them, including gems like “What a VC Order for Breakfast Says,” and “What the Founder’s Email Address Says About Your Startup.” If you’re actively/imminently/eventually seeking funding for your startup, you should definitely check it out. Enough of the intro—let’s check out his email habits! Email philosophy: Like many people, David views his inbox as a todo list. He is always striving to reach inbox zero, though he isn’t sure he’ll ever get there. Tools:
- Email service: Gmail (work and personal)
- Email interface—desktop: Gmail web client (keeps work and personal open in different tabs)
- Email interface—phone: Native Gmail app for Android
- Phone: Droid Incredible
- Third party apps/tools: FollowUp.CC, which he uses to set future reminders
Activity:
- Work Emails received 07/25/12: ~50-75. Some of these are graymail, but he’s very proactive about unsubscribing to anything he doesn’t regularly open.
- Work emails sent 07/25/12: 35
- Incoming email peak/nadir: None. Email flow is constant during weekdays. Entrepreneurs tend to be up late working, and since some of Next View’s portfolio companies are on the west coast, David often gets emails at 4am EST.
- Desktop vs phone: He checks and responds to the majority of his emails from the desktop. His phone is more of a triaging tool: he uses it to read and archive or leave for later.
- First checked email: 6am, on his phone with one hand while eating breakfast (presumably with the other). He has a baby, so checking email is not the first thing he does in the morning.
- Morning: Was at his desk, and had email open on his desktop throughout
- Afternoon: Was out at meetings, and checked email on his phone in between meetings.
- Evening: Checked email on laptop and phone.
- Last checked email: Between 8:30-9pm. There is more time in the evenings than in the mornings between when he last checks email and when he goes to bed.
- Was Tuesday a typical day: Yes
- Weekend use: Unless he’s putting together a deal, he doesn’t spend much time on email during the weekends.
- Vacation use: Sporadic.
- Overload alter: yellow
Does David’s day in email look like yours? Tell me how/how not in the comments! [Photo credit: NextView Ventures]
from BostInno http://bostinno.com/channels/checking-email-isnt-the-first-thing-venture-capi...
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