Wow. Just when you think Facebook is truly your "friend" you find out that it's spying on you and reporting your activities to your other "friends." The Wall Street Journal reports that Facebook is tracking user activities outside of Facebook and reporting that activity to that user's friends within Facebook.
Creepy, indeed.
The social-networking service earlier this month began posting updates about users' activities on Web sites outside of Facebook and on commercial pages within Facebook -- in some cases, alongside ads from the companies behind those Web sites or pages. Facebook is posting users' photos alongside certain advertisements, another feature that has alarmed some privacy advocates and users.
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What does it take to run a successful open-source project? Does leadership go to the best developer? To the smartest geek in the room? In other words, to everyone but me?
No, no, and yes, it turns out, as academic researchers Siobhán O'Mahony and Fabrizio Ferraro recently published in the Academy of Management Journal Just as in off-line, non-developer communities, leadership within open-source communities falls on the shoulders of those who exercise it. Namely, those who care about a project as a community and nurture it, rather than those who simply write th best code within that community.
It is commonly believed that open source communities operate in a meritocratic manner: positions of authority are allocated according to merit. However, it is not clear whether merit in these communities means technical contributions or organization building. One developer, commenting on Debian's 2001 election for leadership, noted, "I have seen a lot of developers go from nobodies to being absolutely huge on the project." So, does a great code guarantee a great leadership position?
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(Credit:
Plaxo)
TechCrunch is reporting that Plaxo's Pulse has jumped "an order of magnitude" in adoption (from 200,000 connections to over one million), as Plaxo's VP of Marketing John McCrea notes on his blog.
Lesson learned? According to McCrea, "open" is good for business:
When we launched the beta of Pulse in August, we made a strategic bet -- that the market was ripe for an "open social network" (rather than yet another "walled garden").
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I really like the song "Californication," but it's not an enforceable trademark for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, no matter what this lawsuit against Showtime says:
The lawsuit alleges unfair competition, dilution of the value of the name and unjust enrichment, claiming the title is "inherently distinctive, famous ... and immediately associated in the mind of the consumer" with the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
"Californication is the signature CD, video and song of the band's career, and for some TV show to come along and steal our identity is not right," the band's lead singer, Anthony Kiedis, said in a statement.
I think people up in Oregon, for one, might beg to differ.
... Read moreWhen U.S. presidential candidates start promoting their open-source and open-document platforms, you know that the open-source movement has finally arrived. I mean, what could be more flattering than to be someone's five-second sound bite?
OK, lots of things. But I still liked reading that Barak Obama has made open document formats part of his campaign, as he noted in a recent speech at Google:
We have to use technology to open up our democracy. It's no coincidence that one of the most secretive Administrations in history has favored special interests and pursued policies that could not stand up to sunlight. As President, I'll change that. I'll put government data online in universally accessible formats.
Namely, ODF. Maybe. Or not.
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A letter from the top two ranking members of the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights, Democrat Herb Kohl and Republican Orrin Hatch, seeks to chill Google's proposed acquisition of DoubleClick on antitrust grounds:
Antitrust regulators need to be wary to guard against the creation of a powerful Internet conglomerate able to extend its market power in one market into adjacent markets, to the detriment of competition and consumers.
This might not have seemed like much of a threat, even a year or two ago, but as the online world increasingly merges with the offline world, the threat becomes more palpable.
My primary concern with the deal isn't about advertising market share, but rather about privacy, as the senators also call out:
... Read moreI woke up to this post from Marc Fleury (Founder of JBoss), and found his comment about what intellectual property to protect in an open-source project to be very telling:
[P]rotecting IP in OSS [open-source software] is extremely important. The only "private" property that exists in OSS are 1- brand 2- URL. Both are obviously related but really you need to protect your brand name, in other words REGISTER your trademarks, use them, declare they are yours and enforce the trademark, meaning protect against infringement. Other products, specifically based on your product should not include your name. Consultancies will be able to say they know and work with your "product name" but they cannot ship products using your trademark. Educate yourselves on brand IP, that is a big asset in OSS.
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(Credit:
Battery Geek)
I fly internationally at least once per quarter. Given that flight time tends to be some of my most productive time, I need to ensure I have enough juice to get me over the Atlantic without missing a beat on email or, even more importantly, that Arsenal match I previously ripped to my Mac's hard drive with Elgato's EyeTV 250.
I used to use Electrovaya's PowerPad, but it doesn't (or didn't) support the MacBook Pro. So when I started looking around for a replacement, I discovered Batterygeek's Portable Power Station. It's bulkier than the Electrovaya battery, though more compact, and doesn't last as long (eight or nine hours, depending on how CPU-intensive my activity, compared to 10 to 14 hours). Having said that, Batterygeek has come out with new models that last as long, if not longer, than Electrovaya's (one goes for over 20 hours).
... Read moreA friend of mine related something very interesting to me the other day. We were discussing the relative value of social networking (Facebook, specifically) over email or "more traditional" ways to connect, given Slashdot's post that "email is for old people."
That struck me as wrong since the 12-18-year olds that I know (and I actually know quite a few since I'm involved in several neighborhood youth groups) may not spend most of their communication in email, but they certainly don't spend it in Facebook or MySpace, either. They take a blended approach, just as I do, and communicate with friends according to how close they are:
... Read moreGartner recently issued a useful research report entitled "What We Can Learn About Collaboration From Open-Source Communities." As the report starts off, "Successful open-source projects are characterized by a mix of high participation, engagement and motivation, along with low coordination costs." The report therefore combs through nine principles that lead to these properties and point to ways to extend these "open source" benefits beyond open source.
There are a range of interesting principles, including "Visible Current and Historic Work in Progress" and "Visible Individual Contribution History," but I particularly liked this one that deals with modularizing a problem:
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