WiredPen

The Blogging Boom: How Journalism, Private Enterprise, Parenting, and Civic Action Have Changed (link1, link2)
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The One Laptop Per Child promo has been extended to the end of the year. I received my “welcome to the community” email earlier today. They have good copywriters!

One of the most ingenious features of the XO laptop is its ability to create a “mesh” network. The little green antennae “ears” serve to automatically connect the XO with other XO laptops in the vicinity. What this means is that if your child has friends nearby that also have XO laptops, the children can chat, play and share information freely and safely, with or without an internet connection. If you would like to let other parents know about the XO laptop and Give One Get One, you can not only greatly increase your child’s enjoyment of the XO laptop, but also help us further our mission.

Now I need to figure out how to jumpstart the one-year complimentary T-Mobile HotSpot service.

Ethan Zucerkman (Berkman Center) explores the relationship between Facebook and Overstock:

If you’ve got a Facebook account, try this experiment: Go to overstock.com and buy something… As you complete the purchase, a window appears in the bottom right of your browser window, announcing “Overstock.com is sending this to your Facebook profile”…

Now log into Facebook. You’ve got a new item in your mini-feed, the message “Overstock.com is sending a story to your profile.”

Whoa, Nellie!

I remember when people gnashed their teeth and wrung their hands over the possibility that DoubleClick could track them from site to site (no transparency but no shouting their findings to the rooftops, either). I’m vey surprised that this disquieting practice — a jarring opt-out that runs counter to net culture — is being met with relative silence by the Facebook community. Privacy advocates have protested, but FBers, not so much.

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Funky two minute video from Nokia focuses on how Web 2.0 technologies — and your Nokia smart phone — are simple. They’re all about people. (tip)

On the eve of a major re-release of the Joshua Tree, U2 has posted a preview to the Facebook community. The clip includes an interview with Bono where he sings and talks “over” a previously unreleased track. Kudos to <a href=”cNet for reporting: “Bono’s choice of using iLike over other platforms for giving the exclusive could have been motivated by his business contacts. Marc Bodnick sits on the board of both iLike and a venture capital firm, Elevation — the same VC firm that Bono is involved in.”

From the developer: “iLike lets you add music to your profile and find your favorite concerts (not to mention see who else is going!). Bonus: Use it to get free mp3’s that match your tastes and try to beat your friends at the Music Challenge.” (Facebook application key.)

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The Village Voice reports that the viability of an open source electronic voting system is threatened “the State Board of Elections’ $2 million testing fee.” But Darlene Mealy, a Brooklyn City Council Member, is asking that the fee be waived. She is also pushing for a requirement that the voting equipment be based on accessible software: Read the rest of this entry »

Kalena Jordan has launched a wiki (beta) dedicated to search engines. There’s info about conferences, terms, personalities, blogs, and, of course, the search engines themselves (organized by country - amazing). (tip)

The site is beta, so here are some design suggestions for Kalena:

• Ditch the ALL CAPS page titles. If the title is being drawn automatically from the H1, and you’re married to the idea of ALL CAPS THERE (note: they’re harder to read than mixed case), then change your stylesheet.
• The definitions are a useful resource — but the list (all lists, not just these) should be set off with bullets or numbers for ease of readability.
• The naming convention / information architecture is confusing: ArticlesELearning, CategoryBooks, SearchEnginesBotswana. If I am “on” the search engines category page, the link should simply be “Botswana.”

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… now on Flickr, posted Tuesday. “It was taken in front of Market City in Chinatown Haymarket in Sydney.” (All Rights Reserved, tip)

In the last six months, the number of photos on Flickr has quadrupled:

2 000 000 000 - 13 Nov 2007
1 000 000 000 - Private
500 000 000 - 15 May 2007
100 000 000 - 15 Feb 2006
10 000 000 - 19 Apr 2005
1 000 000 - 22 Oct 2004

These other milestone images are more mundane shots, in case anyone is thinking “human intervention” given the quality of the 2 billionth image. (tip)

Flickr: launched in 2004; acquired by Yahoo! in March 2005 (was it really that long ago?).

I just spent 15 minutes cursing my Brother printer and Brother, the company. Later, I spent a few more cursing Apple.

My Brother HL-2070N stopped working from the laptop. Then, a few weeks later (today), it stopped printing from the Mini. It would start printing, then “hang.” No error message. See the screen capture.

I searched the web and found nothing helpful.

I went to brother.com help and found a troubleshooting page for Windows that echoed my problem. The first line: “It’s possible that the IP address of your Brother machine has changed.” Read the rest of this entry »

Announcing a special theme issue of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication; Volume 13, Issue 1, October 2007 is devoted to Social Network Sites. Guest Editors: danah boyd and Nicole Ellison. Read the rest of this entry »