I’m sure you’ve noticed the many website around the internet today that have blacked out in protest of something called SOPA. From giants like Wikipedia and Reddit down to individual blogs and webcomics, users all around the world are sitting up and taking notice.

I am joining my blog to that voice. This website is going dark in protest. Read on.

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MG Siegler of TechCrunch fame has a really interesting post up at his blog discussing the history and evolution of Android as a smartphone platform, and the role it has played in shaping the mobile industry:

Thanks to the Google/Verizon alliance on the matter, the FCC decided the compromised vision of Net Neutrality was just fine also. To be clear: Net Neutrality was thrown out in the wireless space because Google sided with Verizon’s ridiculous and horribly conflicted stance on the matter.

The open spectrum enemy, turned Net Neutrality enemy, became Google’s bedmate thanks to a business deal. Straight up. Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.

We got all of this thanks to Google’s desire for Android to take over the world. I commented earlier that they signed a deal with the devil — I wasn’t being facetious. They actually did! And they got away with it!

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In June 2009, a 24-year-old woman in Sweden ran for a seat on the European Parliament as part of the Pirate Party…and won:

As you may have imagined, the Pirate Party’s goals concern reforming copyright laws, specifically allowing p2p networking and file sharing, and doing away with patent laws altogether.

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As for the patents, the Pirate Party (which was formed in 2006) specifically cites the pharmaceutical industry as the reason why patents should be abolished completely. The third major part of their platform involves doing away with overreaching government surveillance.

A party like this can’t be the majority party running a country – they don’t have much of a platform (or much experience) running the rest of the country administratively. But things like this does make me wonder if a more issue-based system of voting would make more sense. What if there were broadsweeping categories of issues for things like health care, education, financial reform, civil rights, police funding, etc. and you got to vote for your preferred party/candidate in each one? I could vote for the Pirate Party for intellectual property reform and the Socialist Pinko Party for my women’s rights issues.

I understand there are all sort sof logistical issues with having various non-consolidated groups in charge of separate segments of a country’s administration, but it can’t get much worse than the current 2- or 3-party systems wherein there is such overwhelming dominance that it is impossible for any newcomer to shoehorn themselves in. This would make government more adaptible to emerging issues as well. Just as there are write-in ballots, perhas parties could have write-in issues that they’re running under.

Plus, if no single group can strong-arm another group, maybe there will actually be cooperation.

Whimsical dreams of a non-political-scientist and all that.

I’m a big fan of Excel. Not just because I use it at work all day–in fact, you’d think that would make me hate it more–but because the degree of neurotic categorization and organization it offers delights my not-so-inner obsessive. Pivot tables? If functions? Bring it on!

Eddie of Practically Efficient, however, thinks they’re on their way out:

The spreadsheet used to be my everything tool. From sophisticated financial modeling to text manipulation to list-keeping to word processing (seriously) to ad hoc arithmetic.

Apps are replacing the need to use spreadsheets for everything.

I’ve sort of talked about this before, but this is really the reason that I haven’t taken to my iPad that much as a productivity tool. I don’t work in standalones. I don’t want to have to go hunt for an app that does what I think I want to do, because that wastes my time. I’m not above spending money for apps, but anytime I buy an app I spend so much time researching it when it could’ve been accomplished with just a spreadsheet or word processing document that it seems to defy the purpose of computers being timesavers. I’ve spent a lot of time researching agenda apps and calendar apps, and now I just use a Moleskine. (Yes, I’m one of those people.)

I’m certainly not alone in being overwhelmed by the need to pick The Best App for any of my intentions. But I didn’t buy an iPad because I wanted to research apps. I want to be able to pick up my iPad with a purpose in mind and just do it.

I love lots of things about the iPad: the games, the videos, the e-books, the browsing. And I have no doubt that artists and musicians love being able to carry powerful tools like that around everywhere. But what about your generically prolific computer user? Sometimes I code and tinker with the back-end on my website, other times I have 20 tabs open while I decide what to write about, and then maybe I’ll want to put together an event for a group. Even when I’m working on a piece of fiction, I’ve got multiple documents open–setting descriptions, character reference sheets, timelines. I don’t want to have to get a new app everytime I decide to do something new, even something as simple and as intuitive as “show two word documents side by side so I can look at the information while writing something else”.

This sounds like I’m complaining, but I’m really not. I’m fine with the purpose that the iPad currently serves in my life. I love my MacBook Pro and feel entirely at home on it, and I’m fine with using the iPad for casual gaming and browsing. I just wish that proponents of the iPad as a legitimate form of computing would acknowledge that there are things that it’s not good at. Eddie, for example, thinks that the reason spreadsheets on the iPad suck is because Microsoft hasn’t made a good app for it.

Are you kidding? I don’t care how beautifully designed your app is, give me a keyboard, mouse, and number pad any day. Have you seen the spreadsheets I work with?

With the announcement of Amazon’s next generation of Kindles, I’ve been thinking a lot about One Laptop Per Child, the non-profit program started by the founder of MIT’s Media Lab that aimed to develop a hundred-dollar-laptop to be distributed to children in developing countries.

The principle of One Laptop Per Child was to improve living conditions in developing countries through access to information. The thinking went that the internet could act as the great equalizer; assuming you can read and write–which, admittedly, is a pretty big assumption–you can use the internet to teach yourself skills you might need to improve your own conditions. This ranges from more efficient farming practices to health and safety information to access to microfinancing.

The first deployment of OLPC took place in 2007, which models costing $188. The latest iteration is set to come out in 2012, with a price point below $100. It basically looks like a pared down tablet.

Or, well, a Kindle.

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I get into a lot of arguments about Reddit, because I have friends across pretty much all major geek networks (think Slashdot in its heyday, Something Awful, etc.) Here are some quick thoughts about the community culture at Reddit, adapted from an email to a friend:

It’s true what all the supporters say: there are a lot of subreddits, there’s a lot of good moderation, and it’s not one monolith. I’ve discovered some pretty hilarious things in r/pics, and also connected pretty deeply with posters who needed help in r/depression, and read some really insightful analysis in r/foodforthought.

But Reddit’s tagline really tells you all you need to know: Reddit is the front page of the internet.

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The Society Pages has an interesting point about using Facebook in class, and how the professors are more than aware that this sort of slacking is going on:

To return to the classroom example, the power of disclosure and connection to a network of intimates is difficult for a professor to compete with. I am a stranger to most of my students. They don’t know me. They have no way of knowing whether what I’m saying in the classroom will be useful, or uncomfortable by making them think about things they have little control over. Read full post…

Normally I find myself in total agreement with whatever Marco Arment says–after all, the guy came up with Instapaper–so I was surprised to find myself really irritated by his piece a couple of weeks ago on the Proper Way to use RSS feeds. His post came in response to an article by Jacqui Cheng in Ars Technica, on the dangers of becoming addicted to RSS:

The first time I went without RSS in August, I simply went around to three or so of what I consider to be the best sites to get the latest news from. I combined that with my usual e-mail communications (tips from readers, conversations with PR folks from different companies, interviews already in progress, etc.) and my regular scans of Twitter in order to figure out what was going on during the day. It was stress-free, and I never felt like I was missing anything—I knew that if something truly important or controversial blew up, I’d hear about it instantly via Twitter and our loyal readers.

The next day when I loaded up my feeds, there were literally thousands of items piled up from the day before. (“Wow, I really comb through this much crap in a day? It looks so different when it’s all smashed together like this,” was the first thought that went through my head.) And when I ended up sifting through them all, I realized that I hadn’t missed a single story doing things the “old fashioned” way—rather, by following all these feeds, I was instead seeing hundreds of iterations on the same handful of stories. And I was wasting time going through them all day long. Read full post…

Great analysis in Paid Content about the forthcoming Amazon Kindle Tablet and why it could succeed where other Android apps have failed:

Amazon is a conduit to lots of content; and, just as importantly, it already has a way for you to buy content from it. Like Apple, it is one of the 10 biggest merchant holders of credit card numbers in the world (along with companies such as eBay, PayPal, Sony through the PlayStation Network and Microsoft through its Xbox Live system).

Notice the company missing from that list? Google. It has almost no relationship in financial terms with the average person. Read full post…

Back before Don’t Ask Don’t Tell had been repealed, noted video blogger and NYC radio DJ Jay Smooth had this to say about the perversity of a society terrified by homosexuality:

Because when we find ourselves believing that killing a man makes us more of a man, but loving a man makes us less of a man, it’s probably time to re-examine our criteria for manhood.

This quote has been on my mind a lot lately.

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