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Defend the Open Web: Keep DRM Out of W3C Standards

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The DRM proposals at the W3C exist for a simple reason: they are an attempt to appease Hollywood, which has been angry about the Internet for almost as long as the Web has existed, and has always demanded that it be given elaborate technical infrastructure to control how its audience’s computers function. The perception is [...]

Business | Current_Events | Cyberculture | Journalism | Social_Software | Writing

Washington Post seeks blogger to post ‘at least’ 12 times per day

The ideal candidate would have experience reporting, writing and producing online content as well as a proven fluency in social media. We need someone with the confidence to work independently, but also a team player who can collaborate with our critics, columnists and reporters.

This blogger should be able to identify trends, cutting through the [...]

Business | Culture | Current_Events | Cyberculture | Journalism | Media

Pew’s State of the Media: Ignore the doomsaying. American journalism has never been healthier.

American news media has never been in better shape. That’s just common sense. Almost anything you’d want to know about any subject is available at your fingertips. You don’t need to take my analysis of the Cyprus bank bailout crisis as the last word on the matter: You can quickly and easily find coverage from [...]

Academia | Cyberculture | Essays | Humanities | Journalism | Modding | Rhetoric | Social_Software | Writing

The Blessay

My own pedagogical term for this is “richly-linked blog post” — emphasizing the value of hyperlinking to sources, evidence, definitions, counterpoints, etc. (Thanks for the link, John S.)

Sorry, I don’t have a better name for it, but I feel it needs a succinct name so we can identify and discuss it. It’s not a [...]

Business | Culture | Current_Events | Cyberculture | Essays | Ethics | Government | Modding | Technology | Usability

Forget the Cellphone Fight — We Should Be Allowed to Unlock Everything We Own

As long as Congress focuses on just unlocking cellphones, they’re missing the larger point. Senators could pass a hundred unlocking bills; five years from now large companies will find some other copyright claim to limit consumer choice. To really solve the problem, Congress must enact meaningful copyright reform. The potential economic benefits are significant, as [...]

Amusing | Cyberculture | Media

When In Academia – WHEN A COLLEAGUE KEEPS TALKING ABOUT ‘DIGITAL HUMANITIES’:

When In Academia – WHEN A COLLEAGUE KEEPS TALKING ABOUT ‘DIGITAL HUMANITIES’:.

Business | Current_Events | Cyberculture | Journalism | Media | Technology

Washington Post to begin charging regular website, mobile app. users for digital subscriptions

The Washington Post says it will begin selling digital subscriptions this summer, asking frequent visitors to its website and mobile apps to pay a fee supporting the company’s journalism.

The Post announced plans Monday for a metered subscription model. It will require a paid subscription after the viewing of 20 articles or multimedia features per [...]

Cyberculture | Design | Education | Technology

FIRST Pittsburgh Regional 1st Time to the TOP – 3955 – YouTube

“The Big Tickle” was the only bot at the the Pittsburgh regional FIRST Robotics Competition that tried climbing all the way to the top rung for 30 points. The crowd went wild every time our bot did its thing. We got picked by the seventh-ranked team to join their alliance in the quarter finals. Though [...]

Culture | Cyberculture | Design | Health | Media | Modding | Technology

New Voices For The Voiceless: Synthetic Speech Gets An Upgrade

Wonderful, inspiring article that uses text, photos, and audio samples to tell how a researcher remixed wordless sounds to create an artificial voice for a voiceless child.

Patel can take that sound, run it through a computer and find out all kinds of things about how that person would sound if that person could speak [...]

Aesthetics | Amusing | Cyberculture | Drama | PopCult

Today’s Google Doodle is Mostly Harmless

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Ford Prefect kept a script of Godspell in his satchel, by the way, in order to support his cover story of being an actor. I used an image from the cover of “So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish” in a slide presentation I used as a prop on stage during the “Tower of [...]