Category Archives: computing & internet

In Protest Of SOPA And PIPA

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This blog will go dark tomorrow to protest crimes perpetrated by people who know all about the internet aided by their toadies in government who know nothing of it.

From SOPAStrike.com:

On Jan 24th, Congress will vote to pass internet censorship in the Senate, even though the vast majority of Americans are opposed. We need to kill the bill – PIPA in the Senate and SOPA in the House – to protect our rights to free speech, privacy, and prosperity. We need internet companies to follow Reddit’s lead and stand up for the web, as we internet users are doing every day.

As a scientist and representative of Project Gutenberg, i.e. an internet user, I stand against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its more insidious older twin, the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) winding their ways through Congress.

DMCA, ACTA, SOPA, PIPA, whatever you want to call it, extended copyright terms and draconian terms of punishment for use violation are not the worst the state of intellectual property has come to. Every single day, books, art and scientific results that belong to the public domain are actively stolen away from us, turned into copyrighted product and then “protected from theft” with the help of those elected to represent us in government. This is a serious breach of the social contract and absolute proof that our congresspeople have been bought. They now represent other constituents that go by MPAA, RIAA, IFPI and AAP.

Keep information free, especially that which was free to begin with, and help break down the bars of ignorance and illiteracy. Join the fight against SOPA and PIPA. It’s going to be a long one.

The Quest For The Perfect Feedreader Continues

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Ever since Google killed existing features in Google Reader and began catering it to their new (mediocre) Google+ Social Media Extravaganza experience, I’ve been on the hunt for ONE quick and easy way by which to deliver media from around the web to a single archival list which I can then share here and elsewhere. The pattern that emerges from my investigation is one of inconsistency between platforms sprayed with a philosophy of We’re A Startup Waiting To Be Bought as opposed to Let’s Help You Share Information. Some of the avenues I tested and results in a convenient spreadsheet format:

The bottom line is that old Google Reader would update items in your carefully-compiled list of feeds, allow you to share your picks to Google Shared Items whether on a desktop, iPhone or iPad all through the same Google account and then give you the ability to publish that list to a page or the sidebar of your blog. SIGH. After this bit of research, the interim workaround I propose is to share these items in delicious and, if you use WordPress like me, can activate a seriously ugly delicious widget via a plugin called WP Delicious Sidebar, which then displays your items of choice in the sidebar. Doing this also serves to archive your links (with tags, if you so desire) in one place.

As I mention in the spreadsheet, Zite has potential but it is available only for iPad and doesn’t show every single item in a feed. As I mentioned to Patrix (who helpfully suggested that I sign up for HiveMined), I don’t want guesses at what I might want to read. I want to see every single item in every single feed to which I signed up, and the suggestions are lagniappe!

If you have any bright ideas or know of apps I’ve overlooked here, please let me know in the comments. Just remember that solutions have to work on desktop, iPhone and iPad and should not require having to turn around three times, pat your tummy and rub your head for five minutes, sing a song and tapdance before getting a piece of information from my screen to yours.

It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way, Google (Reader)

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Yesterday, Google released the overhaul of its feedreader, Reader, which features increased integration with Google’s relatively new answer to Facebook, Google+. If you like auto-spamming your Facebook or Google+ timeline with links to articles minus context or, in general, do not think of the internet as a space in which to share information in a thoughtful and meaningful way, stop reading now. If you are tired of another company’s sorry attempt at imitating Facebook in the absence of a proper platform and especially don’t want it interfering with great features that work for you and your community of friends, colleagues and readers, keep going. Even better, if you work at Google or know someone who does*, there are a few suggestions below that I would like implemented to make the internet a happy and safe place for information sharing once again.

I use Reader to:

- quickly access and read the latest blog posts and online magazine articles from feeds that I have bookmarked in the reader,

- organize these feeds into the folders of Geology, Geophysics, New Orleans, Science, Science Blogs, Technology and Visualization; share links to individual folders (bundles) with interested parties;

- share specific blog posts or articles either on Shared Items or by publishing them to this blog inside the Recommended Reading sidebar widget (simple list of hyperlinked titles of shared items) ALL IN ONE CLICK and

- share and DISCUSS items inside Reader with a specific group of WILLING followers who can passively join my Followers list and I theirs.

Now:

- access is really slow with increased load times; furthermore, the feed refreshes and displays the latest set of posts while you’re still reading previous ones,

- folders are still there and users can still create and share bundles,

- you +1 (instead of share) a post which then goes to a +1 page on your Google+ profile (complete with a Buzz tab that we are warned will be going away in a few weeks). Note that you not only have to create a non-pseudonymous Google+ profile in order to share Reader items, but also have to point your friends, colleagues and readers to the location of the +1 page, and

- once you’ve publicly +1ed the Reader item of interest, you have the option (which works on a PC desktop, works for crap on a PC laptop and not at all on an iPad) to create a post on Google+ to let your Circles know that you, Google+ user, have shared yet another article which is going to take up more of their screen real estate than is really warranted.

This, i.e. what used to be feedreader + Twitter + del.icio.us + publishable outside of Google space + all self-contained in terms of size and community,

has become this for archival:

along with this for sharing and discussion:

Instead of going from my blog to the article, the pathway has now become my blog –> my Google+ +1 list –> the article or my blog –> my Google+ stream –> the article. Archival? That’s right out the window.

Because all we need are more gates and gatekeepers between us and the information.

The Official Google Reader Blog explains these changes: “Integrating with Google+ also helps us streamline Reader overall. So starting today we’ll be turning off friending, following, shared items and comments in favor of similar Google+ functionality.”

I don’t understand why Google has to cancel one set of features in favor of another, unless it is to force users into Google+. Some argue that the social integration with G+ is something that they look forward to, which is great, but why not host a +1 button for G+ users as well as a Share button for those who do not want to utilize Google products socially?

Which brings us to the fundamental difference between the two: signal to noise. As I said on a G+ post this morning to which not a soul responded (probably because it drowned in the sea of re-re-re-re-re-shares of Rick Perry’s “drunk” speech – QED):

Along with the tremendous amount of white space, the signal-to-noise ratio of content is already very low at Google+ which is why I also don’t hang out at Facebook much other than to comment on other folks’ posts (when I find them in the noise there) or to make short throwaway posts myself. Now, folks sharing their Reader items here without context makes it even more noisy and unreadable.

Congratulations, Google, you have succeeded in sacrificing internet meaning – content in context – for more internet clutter in a silly attempt to reproduce Facebook, and in the process really pissed off a bunch of scientists, bloggers and internet users who, until yesterday, happily utilized Reader as a staple of simple, one-click, high signal-to-noise sharing and discussion. You just can’t have this in Plus.

Garrett Guillotte sums up for me:

Even if every Reader feature made it to Plus — and shit no they haven’t, and it doesn’t look like they will — the entire concept, culture and process is completely different. You can’t remotely replicate the closed, tight, context- and content-first communities of Reader in Plus. You can’t efficiently or effectively share, excerpt, annotate or discuss a 3,500-word longform news article on Plus alone without opening at least two other tabs.

Some suggestions for Google:

1) Please help us publish our +1s outside of Google+ via a “shared feed.” All you have to do is build a “Share This On Your Blog” embed utility into the +1 page.

2) Please replace the “Note In Reader” bookmarklet with a +1 bookmarklet. What if I want to +1 an article published on a website that doesn’t use +1 buttons? And, no, they’re all not going to add the +1 button to their websites/pages, just like they didn’t “Facebook This” or “Tweet This.” Give it up.

3) Can we go back to refreshing feeds as we did two days ago? I would really appreciate the page not cutting to all white and then repopulating itself with new material, all while I am in the middle of reading something.

4) Please don’t let this become your version of what Yahoo! did to GeoCities.

Functionality over mediocrity. Tremendous usefulness over killing useful features. These should be internet mantras. Ultimately, there is just no need for another Facebook, which is itself far from perfect (and, in fact, on the quest to completely confuse the hell out of its users). But, a utility that can be Facebook, feedreader, Twitter and Pinboard/delicious to many and in the doses that they want? Now THERE is a gamechanger.

Who do you want to be, Google? Figure that out first.

==
* The guy who engineered the Google+ Circles model and I went to the same high school years apart. And what am I going to say? “Hey, fix this or I’ll stuff you in your locker.” We were a bunch of nerds who would have all been stuffed in lockers in a normal high school and we didn’t even lock our lockers.

***

Related:

Brian Shih | Reader redesign: Terrible decision, or worst decision? “The closest analogue might be if Twitter made it so that 3rd party clients could use the Retweet functionality to push Retweets to a user’s stream — but only allowed you to consume Retweets on twitter.com.”

Donors Choose And ROCK!

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The 2011 Science Bloggers for Students online charity challenge was once again a smashing success thanks to all of you who donated. The overall drive brought in more than $51,000 from 698 people. Ocean and Geobloggers brought in around $3100 of that money to which you guys contributed $585 $645!

In order of donation date, thanks and high-fives go to:

  1. The Donors Choose team
  2. Anne J.
  3. Anita C.
  4. Julie H.
  5. Anonymous Donor Fairy (who gave $100 – yeah!)
  6. Janet S.
  7. Chris R.
  8. my very own D
  9. Craig C.
  10. Rusty H.
  11. Anne J. (again!)
  12. Elizabeth B.
  13. Lynn C. and
  14. Cynthia D.

The fourteen of you reached 519 students, got four earth science classroom projects fully funded and helped four others get started! I want to take this opportunity to thank Janet Stemwedel as well, for once again organizing us science bloggers into doing something tremendously useful.

A note to those of you who donated during the last three days of the drive: Gift codes will arive via e-mail. How the match is calculated and issued to you is detailed here. As gerty-z says, “THIS IS FREE MONEY, folks. Let’s make sure the kids see every last penny.” Just because the Science Bloggers drive is over doesn’t mean individual classroom projects have expired as well. I highly encourage you to donate to one or more of these four projects:

An interesting observation about the projects that did get fully funded before October 22nd: They all have ROCK in the title. Keep On ROCKing In The Free World, Rock Stars, Rock Out and Science ROCKS! Tuck that idea away for next year, earth science teachers.

Thanks again to all of you who gave. I’m making *sparkly eyes* at you.

Took The “Eerily Accurate” NYT Personality Test

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My Visual DNA: Pretty sure my entire personality profile came from my favorite type of movie (assuming that "banana suit kicks goat-cow suit" implies "comedy") and choice of ride (safe).

[LINK] Which helps you understand yourself, thereby “allowing The New York Times marketing department to make personalized product recommendations.” Hey, at least they’re open about their intent.

Turns out I’m a Tech Guru. Flattery is the best form of irritation. Let’s look at what the detailed personality assessment said and then, um, assess ourselves:

“You are the type of person who has the ability to see things from multiple TWO MAYBE THREE perspectives. Nothing is more satisfying than spotting patterns forming in life HUMAN MISTAKES and seeing the beauty in nature. You think everything in life is connected, and keeping in touch with nature ROCKS AND FOSSILS is just as important as keeping up with the latest gadgets. Your sense of humor is one of your best NERDIER qualities. You are naturally friendly and always have something to talk about.

“You have an inquisitive mind and possess an irresistible urge to experiment with TOUCH AND BREAK everything around you. You’re a real get-up-and-go OH WHAT NOW kind of person who likes to keep at least one finger on the pulse of everything that’s hot and happening from the latest movies CAT MACROS and sport FOOTBALL to the coolest technologies and gadgets. A true entertainment junkie, there’s no TOTALLY A chance of you ever getting bored and you’re always the first SECOND AFTER YOUR HUSBAND to get your hands on some shiny new gizmo that’s going to revolutionize TAKE OVER your life. You have a realistic outlook on what you can achieve and enjoy attention to detail in most SOME IDIOSYNCRATIC aspects of your life.”

Much better.

Michael Hart’s “Ode To Steve Jobs”

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One of the last things Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, wrote before he passed away was an essay on Steve Jobs, on the occasion of the latter’s resignation as Apple CEO.  Here is an excerpt from Michael’s piece that reminds why both of these great people will be sorely missed.

We live in an age where the media are controlled by mega-corporations — hopefully not Apple — who deny the importance of the individual hero, to whom we owe so very very much because they want to replace all that via a corporate image that does not depend on individuals, other than as ad spokesmodels for their products, but no longer as the inventor, creator or maker of those products.

Those people, the inventors, creators, and makers of our products are a now lost species in the eyes and ears of our media’s corporate control.

Why Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak?

Because without them we would be years, if not decades, behind in world advancement of personal computers.

Please Give To Science In Classrooms!

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Yes, it’s that time of year again when I beseech you, dear readers, to donate to the DonorsChoose Science Bloggers For Students online charity challenge that helps high-poverty science and mathematics classrooms in need. There is a lot less fanfare and competition between us science bloggers this year, but classrooms are more underfunded than ever. The challenge runs from October 2nd to 22nd this year.

Last year, this blog raised around $500 with a dollar-for-dollar match by HP. At the conclusion of the last challenge, I said, “A simple $1.50 per child living in poverty can make the difference towards a better and slightly more equipped science education.” This is still true. Also read some of the thank-you letters from teachers whose classrooms benefited from your donations through this very page last year. One from a teacher in Illinois puts it all in perspective:

… In addition to increasing the modes of instruction in my classroom, the projector has been an invaluable resource due to the limited budget and high poverty experienced at my school. Several students at my school cannot afford necessary eyeglasses and struggle seeing writing on whiteboards when sitting in the front row. With the new projector, I can zoom in on text to allow all students to read important information. Additionally, my school is struggling to afford paper and toner for the copy machine. We have gone weeks at a time without being able to make copies. The projector allows me to display the required instructions, problems, graphs, and tables so the students can learn and practice new skills.

Please peruse the projects on my 2011 GIVING PAGE and please, please, PLEASE consider giving even $5 to a project of your choice. Let’s support American science education even if (and especially because) the government and private sector couldn’t care less!

Sharing eBooks

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Today’s xkcd:

I’ve lost grey matter beating my head on the walls of this blog and elsewhere on the internet that the advent of eBooks does not signal or signify the death of paper books, nor should it. Anyone who wants paper books to go away is in the business of reading for the sake of technology and not access. With that in mind, it is sad that there are many in this nation, especially librarians, who consider a potential decline in the number of paper books or “the death of print” as a widening of the digital divide. They are right and wrong.

Let’s look at how they are wrong first: Think beyond America (few do) and the number of people across the world we cannot ship physical books to or books that are not printed in their language. With cheap cellphones and pricing plans everywhere in the world except this country, eBooks are made more accessible anywhere you can get a cellphone signal. Now that is access. The digital divide closes. Now, look back at America. We are a nation that takes expensive technology as a given and works for change from that premise. I think we need to take a step back and look at how we consume and address (read: fight) our own patterns of consumption before we cry about how others cannot consume the same way. For instance, I will never buy a Kindle (single function) and truly question the purchase of eBooks for an iPad or similar device. More about this in a little bit.

How they are so, so right: Access to paper and electronic books in the US is a hot, confusing, expensive mess. Most libraries are woefully underfunded and understocked and the stacks of most university libraries are off-limits to the uninitiated, in many cases taxpayers who paid for them in the first place. And why in the name of everything right and sweet are new paperbacks almost $10 a piece, forget larger paperbacks for $14.99 and hardbacks upwards of $40? So, if getting to paper books is this hard, think how much more of a barrier there is is for the average American to get to electronic books. American internet and cellphone plans are the epitome of price-gouging and, in this economy, the first things to be cancelled when drawing up a budget. Following that, unless you plan to read only free, public-domain eBooks for the rest of your life, the pricing structure for for-sale eBooks is completely bogus. Up to $15 for a new eBook – they have to replant more electrons, you see – and don’t give me all that about having to pay the authors and editors because y’all know how much you were paid for paper copies of your books back when. The big honking cherry on top is the question of ownership and sharing. This brings me back to the point earlier in this post when I questioned the purchase of eBooks for any reader.

Is my purchased eBook really mine? In other words, can I do whatever I want with it, including giving it to a friend after I’ve finished reading it without giving away my reader with it? I recently stumbled across librarian Bobbi Newman’s really cool blog and am absolutely intrigued by the notion of checking out your local library’s electronic copy of a book on your reader. How many libraries do this? But, more importantly, when can we do this between my iPad and your Kindle? When can I give you my eBook that I bought for $14? And will a SWAT team come crashing into my house Brazil-style and cart me away to Penguin-Knopf Prison Cell Block C because, somewhere in the fine print of all the legalese surrounding the purchase of an eBook, it says I cannot give you my eBook as I would have my paper copy? Again, if the process is this difficult for me to understand, a technologist who works with Project Gutenberg, to fathom, how much harder is it someone who simply wants to read a book, not pay a fortune for it, actually own it and maybe give it away when done with it? Note that I did not even get into how you have to purchase an expensive eReader first (and its attendant DRM agreements with the providers of every chunk of content you put into it) before you go about borrowing library eBooks.

Yes, I can see how the digital librarians worry. But, I wish they, especially the more high-profile ones, would speak out more and louder against the dictates of the publishing and telecommunications industries instead of taking them as a given. We need less gatekeepers and more gatecrashers.

At the time of this writing, I am considering attending Books In Browsers 2011 as a PG representative, where I hope to learn a lot more about the current state of eBooks and generate ideas to increase access to electronic and paper books. Literacy creates opportunity.

Related Reading: Library Pirates Unlock Rented Digital Textbooks, Take Aim at Publishers

My Eulogy For Michael Stern Hart

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I promised I’d see him through to the end. He wasn’t there any more, but being a pallbearer was my way of keeping that promise. In case I tripped and fell while carrying the substantial coffin, I asked our friend Ben Stone to be on standby. Ben, “Surprisingly, they’re not that heavy. The important part is gone.”

This is what I read to the group of family and friends gathered at the memorial service on Monday. It is granted to the public domain by its author, Maitri Erwin.

***

Let me start by saying that if there was anything Michael disliked, it was wasting precious time celebrating and eulogizing the dead. With that said, let’s celebrate and eulogize Michael Stern Hart.

I’ve known Michael for exactly nineteen years. When we first met, I had just moved to the United States after enormous physical and emotional upheaval. The person that Michael came across at that time was smart, different and very, very angry. Smart was good, different was better, but Michael had no use for static anger. I can still hear him asking, “What are you going to do about it?” And it was through Michael that I was re-introduced to my basic humanity and my capacity to do good from a desire to change. Michael Hart helped me change my life.

“When in Rome, be a Roman candle.” Never be afraid to change the circumstances in which you find yourself.

Michael was one big dynamo of an unreasonable person. Can I get an Amen? [Even the pastor didn't get an "Amen" as loud as that response, by the way.] Well, so am I. The constructive interference of the two personalities wasn’t always … constructive, but Michael and I never parted ways mad because, from the very beginning, we were on the same side, no matter what.

The side which counts success as moving up and on yourself, not pushing others down to look better in comparison. The side which sees wealth in giving knowledge away, not in hoarding it or in money and stuff. The side which recognizes that in order to give knowledge away, you’ve got to work hard everyday to make sure you have more of it. The side of energy, fire, change.

Thank you, Michael, for teaching me how to get the most out of a university, for the hundred Socratic arguments, for the endless frisbee games, for sugar on Garcia’s pan pizza and for seeing me in me.

As for more of Maitri-kind, they’re coming. I’m just sorry that they won’t get to meet you. But, hey, you will make for great bedtime stories.

I’d like to close with words from The Little Prince, which he read to me one afternoon. From the eBook, of course, because it tickled him that I read books on my iPhone.

“Here, then, is a great mystery. For you who also love the little prince, and for me, nothing in the universe can be the same if somewhere, we do not know where, a sheep that we never saw has– yes or no?– eaten a rose …

“Look up at the sky. Ask yourselves: is it yes or no? Has the sheep eaten the flower? And you will see how everything changes…

“And no grown-up will ever understand that this is a matter of so much importance!”

***

I miss you, Michael. Got your back.

Michael Hart Remembered Online – UPDATED

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This post serves as a roundup of good online articles on and tributes to Michael S. Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg and close friend, who passed away two days ago. If you come across any that are not here, please link to them in the comments. So much love ad respect out there for Michael; it amazes me to see how many lives he touched and changed. Thank you all for remembering him in so honest a manner.

Computerworld UK “Fortunately, Project Gutenberg, which continues to grow and broaden its collection of freely-available texts in many languages, stands as a fitting and imperishable monument to a remarkable human being who not only gave the world great literature in abundance, but opened our eyes to the transformative power of abundance itself.”

Cult of Mac “If you have ever downloaded an ebook of any sort, from any source, you have Hart to thank for his pioneering work in the field.”

Brewster Kahle “A special man, a guiding light, a good friend. I miss him.   Lets build that billion book library that he is dreaming of.”

MetaFilter (gods, the wonderful comments on this one) “The Internet needs more people like this and less like thi$.”

Tim O’Reilly “#ebook pioneer Michael Hart, founder of the Gutenberg Project, died yesterday. Anyone who’s read a book online owes him.”

More:

Nat Torkington “I learned how hard it is to be a pioneer: doing work that others don’t value is thankless and marginalizing. I learned how hard it is when others eventually follow you: they don’t value what you’ve done nearly as much as they should … I learned to be generous with my time. I learned that sugar on pizza is a taste it takes longer than one day to acquire.”

eBook Newser

The Rumpus “I have more Project Gutenberg files on my e-reader than I do of all other types combined, and I doubt I’m alone in that.”

Boing Boing

Geekosystem “While his work is often eclipsed by the sleeker, sexier [$$$] offerings through the Amazon and iTunes eBook stores, his aspirations were of the highest order.”

Slashdot From the comments: “… our opinions on methods often clashed, but I have no doubt that he sought to serve humanity to the best of his ability, and especially to bring knowledge and opportunity to everyone in the world – without exception. He strove mightily to break down the barriers to knowledge, and to dethrone the gatekeepers who seek to prevent ordinary people from joining the company of the elite.”

Guardian UK

TechWorld “Hart’s work on Project Gutenberg can be seen an attempt do ‘something right’: Within the constraints imposed by national laws — the ludicrous Mickey Mouse Protection Act, for example — Project Gutenberg endures and continues its work of freely disseminating knowledge and challenging illiteracy.”