January 2012
5 posts
I Believe In The Internet - The Content Industry... →
bradburnham: I am sympathetic to the content industries struggles with piracy, but my belief system tells me the answer is to capitalize on the great strengths of the Internet to create a healthy and profitable relationship with their users not to sue them. Seeing technological changes as an opportunity to “create a healthy and profitable relationship with users” is what it’s...
Jan 21st
861 notes
“The important tests of whether or not a regulation is fit for a purpose are...”
– Cory Doctorow: Lockdown: The coming war on general-purpose computing - Boing Boing
Jan 11th
1 note
Steve Spiker: New Year's Focus →
stevespiker: So screw it, I cannot for the life of me figure out how to segment my thoughts on landscape photography, consumer tech, government tech, open government, democracy, opendata, geospatial, community engagement, social science research, community development, statistics, social justice movements and community development, public service, leadership, hip-hop and faith. No more hours...
Jan 9th
4 notes
“The biggest problem is there aren’t that many good programmers in the world,”...”
– SV Angel And Founder Collective Give Hackruiter $200K For Its Hacker School | TechCrunch I am so happy to see that Hackruiter is growing and continuing to see success.  I worked with both Nick and Sonali for several years at OpenPlans, and have been watching HireHive, and now Hackruiter’s...
Jan 7th
2 notes
2 tags
New
I love new years.  It is my favorite holiday, by far.  Nothing like an agreed upon fresh start — an opportunity to tidy up the office, the inbox (I am proud to say I am at Inbox zero — personal email not work, so not that big an accomplishment — right now), and the mind.   Ok, now that I’ve written that, I see that I started my 2011 new years post with almost the exact...
Jan 2nd
2 notes
December 2011
25 posts
Dec 29th
“This is a truly interesting and hopeful development. Who would have though the...”
– Reddit Users to Target Supporters of SOPA in Congress After Successful Boycott of GoDaddy - Forbes
Dec 29th
Dec 23rd
1 note
“Look, I’m a middle class white guy on deadline at a big-time magazine, with no...”
– Touré on Gene Marks’s If I Were A Poor Black Kid | TIME Ideas | TIME.com Spot-on response to a ridiculous article in Forbes this week.
Dec 18th
Dec 17th
10 notes
“Today, we’re pleased to announce that with the support of Google, Code for...”
– CfA Codes for More of America in 2012: What’s Ahead | Code for America Yeah, baby.
Dec 14th
1 tag
“You cannot simply flood the market with broccoli and hope that people stop...”
–  Clay Johnson, The Information Diet
Dec 14th
1 note
3 tags
Something to aspire to
Today I spent some time with Brad Burnham from Union Square Ventures.  Among other things, we were talking about what’s going on at Code for America and Civic Commons, as well as the latest in the fight to save the Internet. Separately, during the day today, the USV team was interviewing candidates for their new associate position.  It’s sweet job, by pretty much any standard, and...
Dec 14th
9 notes
3 tags
“Remix culture is the new Prohibition, with massive media companies as the lone...”
–  - Andy Baio, No Copyright Intended
Dec 11th
26 notes
Give to Code for America
kevincurry: I’ve been an advisor for a great civic fellowship program called Code for America for the past year. CfA matches talented developers, designers, community managers, and project leads with municipal governments that struggle to keep up with the Internet. It’s like Teach for America for geeks. In this season of giving I’d appreciate it if you would make a tax-deductible contribution...
Dec 11th
7 notes
1 tag
Building Blocks
Yesterday, I was talking on the phone with the incredible, edible, Karl Fogel, about our blogging strategy at Civic Commons.  The day before, Karl had written a great post on the “platform” approach that NYC is taking re: its Bus Tracking data/api project.  The post got a great twitter response, including the beloved and dreaded Tim O’Reilly re-tweet which crashed the Civic...
Dec 9th
6 tags
Joining MIT
My paperwork went through today, so I can finally say it in public without fear of jinxing myself… I am proud and very excited to say that I’m officially joining the MIT Media Lab as a visiting scholar, through the Center for Civic Media.  I’ve been coming here for the weekly lunches and research meetings for a while now, and have been a member of the center’s email list...
Dec 8th
9 notes
3 tags
“As a publisher, I have experience from the front lines of the copyright wars....”
– Congress considers anti-piracy bills that could cripple Internet industries - O’Reilly Radar Pretty great response from Tim O’Reilly, and example of how businesses can (and will need to) continue to adapt as technology and how we use it evolve.
Dec 8th
1 note
4 tags
Dec 7th
3 tags
Dec 7th
148 notes
1 tag
Dec 7th
2 tags
City Camp: We Are All Hyperlinks →
citycamp: This idea that our behaviors model the Web has been on my mind often, lately. Sometimes I’m afraid of it. (Who on the Web hasn’t been freaked out by it?) Mostly I think this is all fantastic. Same here — I can’t get it off my mind.
Dec 7th
7 notes
3 tags
“Sometimes when God closes a door, he opens a window. And sometimes standing...”
–  John Stewart on the news that Donald Trump will be moderating the next Republican debate (on the heels of the news that Herman Cain is dropping out of the race). He is my hero.
Dec 7th
3 notes
“The Internet isn’t really a technology. It’s a belief system, a philosophy about...”
– Joichi Ito - Innovating by the Seat of Our Pants - NYTimes.com So many money lines in Joi Ito’s op-ed in today’s Times.  /via @BradUSV
Dec 7th
1 note
3 tags
Dec 7th
“this election, you, the Colbert nation could have a voice, in the form of my...”
– Colbert gets a Super PAC; So what are they? - CBS News Colbert is totally hilarious.
Dec 6th
3 tags
Next Up at Civic Commons
We just posted this morning on the Civic Commons blog that our founding Executive Director Andrew McLaughlin is now moving on to take a totally awesome job at Tumblr, and that I’ll be moving into the ED role at CC as of today. It has been great working with Andrew since Civic Commons launched in May (and by “launched”, we mean, “launched with funding”, as we’ve...
Dec 5th
3 notes
“The idea behind open innovation is as simple as it is powerful: the creators of...”
– - John Palfrey, from Intellectual Property Strategy Palfrey’s new book is a great primer on intellectual property, written to be relevant to leaders of any type of organization.  It focuses on the practical organizational opportunities around intellectual property assets, and encourages a broader...
Dec 5th
2 notes
2 tags
Open, Interoperable Cities
The first CityCamp, in January 2010 was a memorable event for a bunch of reasons.  It simultaneously marked the birth of several civic technology initiatives — the CityCamp unconference series itself, which has grown like gangbusters since then, Code for America, which has since just finished its first year and is growing like mad, and of course Civic Commons, which started as a partnership...
Dec 2nd
5 notes
Dec 1st
November 2011
24 posts
Nov 30th
Nov 30th
1,794 notes
unfinished work: I Believe In The Internet - The... →
bradburnham: I am sympathetic to the content industries struggles with piracy, but my belief system tells me the answer is to capitalize on the great strengths of the Internet to create a healthy and profitable relationship with their users not to sue them. No matter how strongly I believe that, however, I do not think I have the right to tell them how to run their business. Apparently, they do...
Nov 29th
861 notes
Simple, and fun to use
Whenever you start a project (and I’m thinking about building websites and web applications), you are balancing two somewhat opposed goals: 1) get something working right away and 2) satisfy all your hopes and dreams. The first, I think, is a good instinct.  The second is the real challenge — it’s your wildest hopes and dreams for a project which can ultimately stop you from just getting...
Nov 29th
Prescient Markets
One of my favorite phenomena over the past few years — and one of the stories I like to tell most about why the internet is awesome — is something I call “Prescient Markets”.  Marketplaces (or just producers in some cases) that take a large amount of the risk out of producing & selling products by only building what they know, in advance, that people will buy. The original, and still my...
Nov 29th
“The next Steve Jobs will totally be a chick, because girls are No. 2—and...”
– Louis C.K.: The Next Steve Jobs Will Be A Chick http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/161/louis-ck-on-female-culture
Nov 24th
“Defining services around a grand theme or even emotion allows them more...”
– 5 Minutes of Happiness Each Day
Nov 23rd
5 notes
Eric von Hippel Models a Paradigm Shift From... →
Nov 22nd
Nov 21st
“I believe this description clearly describes Facebook’s behavior, and...”
– Facebook is gaslighting the web. We can fix it. - Anil Dash
Nov 21st
Nov 21st
Nov 21st
Nov 19th
Nov 19th
Nov 17th
Nov 16th
“In addition to being censorship bills, these are anti-entrepreneurship bills....”
– American Censorship Day Is Tomorrow (11/16/11)
Nov 16th
Nov 12th
“Trellis was still one of the contenders, so, after all of these sessions, and...”
– The Agonies of Picking a Product Name - Fog Creek Blog
Nov 7th
Nov 6th