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Comcast: Big Brother *and* Local Monopoly
Yesterday I got a letter in the mail from Comcast. I was surprised, because I’d just paid my most recent bill the day before. I opened the envelope and was created by the title of this letter, “Notice of Action under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.”
Comcast says they got notice from HBO that they found my IP address downloading an episode of “The Wire.” That’s true. It’s just one of the many things I download from the Internet. I download computer applications, music albums, movies, TV shows – you name it, I download it to my computer.
Anyway, as you can see in the above picture of the letter, they got my IP address, name of the file, size of the fil, and even the exact Torrent I was downloading. That’s probably because HBO uploaded a dummy torrent of S01E01 of the Wire to catch “pirates” downloading.
Forgetting the fact that I cancelled that torrent because it was downloading too slow (and that I went on to find a better torrent with the entire first season), Comcast can, quite frankly, suck my balls. They’re the only ISP bowing down to the almighty studios and sending out letters to Internet users via IP address.
Believe me, it’s not my choice to use Comcast. Comcast is virulently anti-union, and they overcharge for Internet to boot (I’m paying $50/month for JUST internet). If I could use RCN, I would; but unfortunately, the only ISP able to serve my building is Comcast.
Going further, Copyright is dead. It is extremely unclear a.) what HBO/TimeWarner hopes to accomplish by uploading dummy torrents to the Pirate Bay, and then identifying those few people who download them, and then send letters to ISPs, and then have those ISPs contact those downloaders. What, do they think that will stop people from downloading their shows. OK. Have fun with that. But b.) what the fuck does Comcast care? There is so much “illegal” activity going on from people using their Internet that it’s impossible to describe. Why do they want to cut off customers who happen to download dummy torrents? I’m going to use the Internet anyway, I’m going to keep paying for their overcharged service, so they should really just save some paper and stop with their petty threats.
I said as much (in <140 characters) to Comcast's Twitter representative, Frank @comcastcares. He replies that he understands my sentiment, which is nice. It doesn’t change the fact that Comcast is enabling HBO’s futile quest to stop a tsunami with an umbrella.
May 8, 07:56 PM / Comment [13]
Plus One Me
Very cool new site from Clay Johnson (via Twitter). It’s called “Plus One Me,” and the tagline says it all:
You can rate your friends in three categories (social, mental, and physical), each with a number of different attributes with which you can “+1” your friends. Social attributes include leadership, romantic, and punctual; mental +1s feature honesty, innovation, and adventurous; make them blush with physical plusses like strength, beauty, and cuteness.
The list is growing, too. If your idea for an attribute is accepted, you get +1 creativity.
You can register on the site to collect +1s, but you can also send them anonymously to your friends via email – even if they aren’t registered on the site.
So go ahead, +1 me – I already gave myself one point for humility.
All-in-one me
I put together my FriendFeed this morning. It’s pretty creepy, but if you for whatever reason want to see everything I do on the internet, it’s all here.
http://friendfeed.com/michaelwhitney
Tasty data with Swivel
I read about Swivel when the site first launched in early or mid-2007, but I finally got a chance to input some small but useful data. I really like the results.
I took data from the Mine Safety website of mining deaths in the US from 1900 to 2007, and uploaded a .csv file to Swivel. It automatically takes the fields and lets you create a play with graphs, clouds, and tables in all sorts of forms.
You can see my whole data set, but Swivel also lets you take what you play with and bring it to other websites with handy embed code.
Here’s a graph of miners vs. mining deaths for the last century.
It’s pretty cool stuff – if you have data and/or graphing needs, I recommend you check out Swivel.
I Called It! Google Docs Sidebar
In September 07 – about four months ago – I wrote a post lamenting the lack of a good way to access Google documents from my desktop environment. I use Google Docs daily, and want to access the files as easily as I can browse my harddrive.
I proposed the Google Docs Sidebar – a Firefox Extension that uses the native browser sidebar to load in a user’s Google documents.
Well, ask and you shall receive. Introducing gDocsBar, a firefox extension that loads your Google documents into your sidebar.
It’s pretty much all I need, but it is a tad bloated and buggy. I notice a slight slowdown in my already out-of-control Firefox activity and memory. There’s also a weird bug for me that when you log in, you have to collapse and then re-expand the sidebar in order to see all the documents, otherwise it just keeps loading nothing.
For me, I can put up with those annoyances for the way-easy access to my Google Docs. I give this extension a 7/10.
TechPres' 2007 Campaign Web Index
TechPresident released its 2007 Campaign Web Index, a survey of “the very brightest minds working in tech and politics,” which includes me, apparently.
The meat of the survey:
Our panel judged Ron Paul and Barack Obama to have the best overall web presences, and they also led their respective fields in the most individual categories. Mike Huckabee and John Edwards followed, with each earning strong support from our panel. But while these four campaigns were the leaders, there were many surprises in specific categories. For example, Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney scored the most points for their online rapid response work.
But head on over to see how everyone evaluated the candidates in 13 tech topics, with excerpted comments from people who responded.
Two great new products from the Sunlight Founation
It’s a busy week for the folks at the Sunlight Foundation, which released two new web apps: Punch Clock Campaign, a Google map mashup of seven members of Congress’ daily schedules; and OpenCongress’ Facebook app to share your favorite bills on your Facebook profile.
Find me at the Huffington Post
Earlier this week I wrote a small piece comparing the fundraising techniques of Chris Dodd and Mitt Romney, who sent similar messages within hours of one another. You can find the original piece at TechPrez. But now you can also find me at the Huffington Post. I’m writing some stories as part of the citizen journalism project Off the Bus.
Much better than cell phones
Next week Jet Blue begins testing in-flight email and instant messaging access, with other airlines rolling out Internet access of varying degrees of similarity soon after. An analyst explains what this means for the future:
“I think 2008 is the year when we will finally start to see in-flight Internet access become available,” said Henry Harteveldt, an analyst with Forrester Research, “but I suspect the rollout domestically will take place in a very measured way.” “In a few years time,” he added, “if you get on a flight that doesn’t have Internet access, it will be like walking into a hotel room that doesn’t have TV.”
What the Writers Strike Teaches about New Media
The American Prospect sat down with the presidents of the Writers Guild of America, which is now wrapping up its second full week of a strike, and the Screen Actors Guild.
The dispute that led to the strike is at its core about giving writers a cut of the money studios bring in from publishing shows on the Internet, so it’s to be expected that new media would be involved anyway.
TAP: A lot of the organizing around this is going on through new media, through blogs, Facebook – the very new media that you’re working to get a piece of.Patric Valone [WGA-West]: [Writers and actors] can get together and actually do media without these guys and get it delivered. It goes back to this quote from Frances Coppola about 12 years ago, where he said that he wasn’t going to make the next Godfather, it was going to be some 7-year-old girl with a digital camera. But how was she going to distribute it? Well, now we have the answer. We now have this distribution model that really seriously impacts the ability of the conglomerates to control production and distribution. What can help them survive in that brave new world is collaboration with the content providers, and yet it seems as though a routine has developed where they would rather try to find the cheaper way or the non-union way, or an approach that cuts us out.
This strike also shows the new face of unionism and collective bargaining in the 21st Century. The writers guild uses its blog to organize updates and informations for members, as well as post videos from the picket lines. Thanks to the tremendous talent and solidarity of writers and actors, guild members are producing dozens of hilarious videos that quickly go viral.
Harold Meyerson in an article accompanying the interview explains what’s at stake:
Last year, however, NBC-Universal asked the writers of “The Office” to create two-to-three-minute “webisodes” of the series for the Internet. Though the webisodes drove up the show’s ratings, the studio paid the writers nothing for their work. The writers, not surprisingly, ceased their webisode writing; the guild sought to negotiate for them with NBC-Universal and got nowhere fast; and the issue of the writers’ right to bargain collectively for Internet work became the crux of the writers’ conflict with the studios.The day before the strike began, the studios offered the guild jurisdiction over writing on the Internet that is related to existing scripted dramas. Their offer wouldn’t cover the streaming of Letterman’s Top Ten list. It wouldn’t cover any material originally written for Internet delivery, a category that in a few years may encompass all new shows.
Segall acknowledges that devising a contract for new media is conceptually challenging. Since nobody knows how much revenue will initially be produced by entertainment delivered by the Internet, the guild’s position is that the contract should stipulate a percentage of Internet-show revenue, rather than a flat fee, for writers.
The guild’s message is: “If they [the studios] get paid, we must get paid.”
It’s a flexible formula, but the studios are thus far holding out for a contract that will cripple the guild’s ability to bargain for flexible, rigid or any formulas at all.
Nations with more high-tech economies than our own, such as the Scandinavian states, have upgraded technology and increased productivity in ways that have enhanced, rather than diminished, the bargaining power and lives of their workers. In the United States, by contrast, our corporate elites, sometimes using technological innovation as a pretext for their power grabs, have destroyed workers’ bargaining power and kept for themselves almost all the revenue from technologically driven productivity increases. The picketers at Paramount and Disney may look to be a chorus line of wise-asses, but their struggle is a deadly serious test of whether any American workers retain the clout to strike a deal with the unchecked greed that is the modern American corporation.
TinyURL Supports Ron Paul - Here's some alternatives
If you venture over to TinyURL, you’ll notice something slightly different about their website. There’s a small graphic in the top right with Ron Paul’s face, with the text “We Support Ron Paul.” Clicking on the image brings you to Paul’s presidential campaign’s website.
Does that not sit well? Do you want your abbreviated URLs to come from a site that doesn’t want to abolish the IRS and pretty much all of the federal government?
Some of the more popular alternatives are:
» urlTea – dead simple replica of TinyURL’s service.
» DecentURL – same deal, but you can add your own extension.
» Snipr – Add your own extension, title tag, and get password protection
Still not enough? Here’s a directory of 100 similar websites. Pick your poison.
For more on the ideology of Ron Paul, read this takedown of his record in Congress, and then read Glenn Greenwald’s rebuttal.
And for the record, I don’t agree with Ron Paul ideologically, but I support his campaign, albeit a quixotic one.
My Journey to the Depths of the Internet
I just took a journey to what I imagine to be one of the outer circles of the Internet; if I read Dante I’m sure I could make a more specific, or correct, analogy. Anyway, this was so bizarre that I wanted to document it. I hope this serves as a lesson to everyone: get off the goddam Internet.
Curious about my co-worker Beth’s gtalk away message, I was directed to this link: a webpage inspired by an xkcd comic that calculates how much it’d cost you to fill a room with multi-colored playpen balls. Still with me? Good.
Facebook Valued at $15 billion
In advance of Facebook’s major advertising announcement in early November, the preeminent social networking platform inked a ad distribution deal with Microsoft for $240 million, or a 1.6% stake in Facebook. Add in the other 98.4%, and in Microsoft’s eyes, Facebook is worth $15,000,000,000. Mark Zuckerberg, then, is worth anywhere from $3-5 billion. If/when someone buys Facebook, or when it goes public, the actual market valuation may be less than $15 billion, but really, once you have 9 zeros, does it really matter?
For all you Harvard students out there, you might want to do a comparison and see if it’s really worth sticking around for the degree. Could there be a Silicone Valley anti-Skulls & Bones led by Bill Gates? If so, Mark Zuckerberg surely is the newest member.
CNN discovers email forwarding.
It appears that the crack news team over at CNN.com did some investigating and found out that people forward email with funny pictures in them. This truly earth-shattering revelation was linked on the front page of the number one name in news. Check out the stunning details:
Dude, you have got to see this. Look in your in-box. Right there between the chain letter promising never-ending good fortune and the Top 10 list of reasons why cats are better than dogs. There it is: An e-mail filled with goofy images of sometimes dubious origins.If you’re like most people, you receive several of these offbeat e-mails each week.
The subject line says something like, “FWD: Re: RE: You think you’re having a bad day?” The images of crushed trucks, endangered daredevils and a horse gone through the front windshield of a car may or may not be genuine, but they certainly are incredible.
Such messages have their roots in chain letters that were once mailed out in paper form. Nowadays, the Internet allows for quick distribution of text, photos and video to many people at a time.
Lerick Johnson, 51, of Alliance, Nebraska, says he and his friends like to send funny photos and messages to each other and forward them on to friends and family. A few years ago, he went looking for Halloween pumpkin carving ideas and ended up sending photos of the more unusual jack-o’-lanterns as a mass e-mail. The photos are circulating again this year.
Stop, stop. You’re saying I can send things to people via email? Fuck off. No way. You’re lying.
I must stop writing. I have to go read I-Reporters’ stories of their mass e-mail horror stories. Have you seen the one with the redneck pictures?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!? LOLzzz!
ByeSpace
I begrudgingly signed up for MySpace to see my friends’ profiles, but I never use it to connect to anyone. The only notification emails I’ve received in the past year are spam or porn profiles. So today I threw in the MySpace towel. I cancelled my account.
The best URL, ever.
Via kottke, what is most probably the best URL I’ve ever seen, ever.
http://httpcolonforwardslashforwardslashwwwdotjenniferdanieldotcom.com/
CNN's ugly politics design: Why you should stick with a single wrapper on a website.
Today CNN debuted a new, separate design for articles in its politics section. Not only is it a bad idea, it’s ugly to boot.
CNN.com is trying to be hip news 2.0 since its relaunch earlier in the summer, and up til now it’s been pretty successful. Why does CNN feel the need to wrap politics articles in a black header? I’m surprised they didn’t have reflected text underneath.
The problem here is that this header is not appropriate for this article. I think CNN is trying to be slick and sleek, but it doesn’t make sense to wrap an article about a plane crash in the CNN politics design.
I don’t want to feel like I’m on a different website than CNN. I come to CNN because they generally keep it simple. What I don’t want is CNN to try to separate its politics content from any other content. Sometimes I click on a political article, and sometimes I want to read what random people think about Britney Spears. Either way, I want a consistent design. CNN should drop this experiment.
Unfortunately, I don’t do that in my work. Pot, kettle, etc.
Firefox users can relax.
The site is aligned in the center again. There was an extra
position: absolute;floating around in the CSS.
Rep. Eric Cantor’s (R-VA) staff did a video choose-your-own-adventure featuring his interns on the exciting subject of taxes or something, I forgot already because this is SO UNBELIEVABLY PAINFUL OMG!!!!1
Check out I Do Tears.com. It’s a quick little site based on my No Iraq Draft template, but it’s pretty fun. I use JS-Kit’s super-easy super-cool comment script to do the comments at the end.
I am now the proud owner of IDoTears.com. I’m going to put up something simple tonight, but would appreciate any hilarious suggestions for how to use this newly valuable domain name.
i’m in ur jurnal analyzin ur internet memes
Flickr quietly rolled out two great new syndication options; in addition to the normal feed link at the bottom of every page, you can now get a feed for only geotagged photos, or get a KML version to load into Google Earth. This is really cool: if you want to access photos that are tagged with a location (for making a map mashup, for instance), you can just get it right from Flickr without running the feed through an external application.
Feed purge.
I just purged nearly 50 feeds from Google Reader. I have a Firefox extension that tells you the exact number of unread items at the bottom of your browser. I’m so busy lately that I haven’t had time to read my feeds, and I had hundreds of unread items staring me in the face. (After Yearly Kos, I had 1,697 unread items…). So, I cut my feed tally from 125 to 82. It’s still a lot, but I feel better already.
Blogging it up at Yearly Kos
I’m at the Yearly Kos Convention in Chicago. It’s a gathering of about 1500-2000 people from “The Internet.” It’s interesting to see what the Internet looks like, and it’s also great to finally have real faces to put next to names of people whose writing I read every day. Also, I feel as though people on the Internet are more likely to have full-on facial hair than people in the real world.
2008 Internet Checkin: Columbus, KY; John McCain's Emails; Hook Up for Obama
It’s been a while since I’ve had the time to write about all that’s happening online in the presidential election, so I’m just going to jump in on this week. Here’s what’s interneting:
techPresident Launches Politickr
Yesterday techPresident – a group blog covering the intersection of technology and the 2008 presidential race – launched Politickr. It’s their great implementation of the site I originally developed at Politickr.net.
FeedBurner + del.icio.us = smokin' hot deliciousness
On previous versions of my website, and all over the American Rights at Work website, I use del.icio.us to create a dynamically updated list of news articles or other links. I then take the RSS feed from the del.icio.us page and burn it through FeedBurner, which allows me to republish these links as HTML, as well as offer a once-a-day email service that collects the links from throughout the day and emails them to subscribers.
Anyway, a question came across a listserv the other day about how best to create a low-tech news clips service for an organization, so I wrote up my method, and it was well received. Kerri Karvetski of Company K Media wrote up the full method on her blog. Check it out.
welcome to my internet.
I’ve been feeling in a bloggy mood, so here is a blog. I will write here soon. Also, these colors suck.
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