Dec. 17th, 2010 13:44

Delicious to (not?) Die

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When it comes to services I rely on on the web, Wikipedia and Google websearch are in their own special class. But the second tier - the one that has LiveJournal and Google Maps and Facebook - probably starts for me with del.icio.us.

And now Yahoo intends to shut it down.

I've been relying on delicious for a long time. I thought it was a bad omen when Yahoo bought it in 2005, because Yahoo is a sloppy, slimy, user-hostile dreck of a company and I feared they were going to Yahooize it, so I've been pleasantly surprised to see it remain unmolested. And they even let the delicious team continue to add great features, such as tag intersection - which is what really made delicious so important to me.

Wanna see what links I've saved about research on education? http://delicious.com/coslinks/research+education
Videos of Goli performances? http://www.delicious.com/coslinks/goli+video
The videos I posted from their gig at Cafe 939? http://www.delicious.com/coslinks/goli+video+cafe939
( More delicious coolness... )

Ben Winkler, a campaign director at Avaaz (similar to MoveOn but international and not focused on the US), started an online petition to Yahoo to save delicious. He's using act.ly, which watches twitter for re-posts of a petition's link and counts how many accounts have posted it, so to "sign" the petition, you post the act.ly link to twitter; or you can just retweet mine.

I don't expect Yahoo to keep running delicious, and apparently they've already laid off the people who were working on it. But the online buzz is already getting some press coverage, and the more online buzz and the more press coverage, the greater the likelihood that a) Yahoo will be willing to sell it or give it away, and b) someone else will be interested in buying it or taking it on. This petition started yesterday and already has over 3900 votes (by the time you read this, it'll probably be over 4000).

Please post/retweet that petition on twitter if you have twitter? And post links to this LJ post where you think it useful.

P.S. The very first act.ly petition ever was actually by me, calling on Obama to suspend Don't Ask Don't Tell (act.ly was launched in 2009). I only got 164 votes.

P.P.S. And yes, as soon as I posted this, I also posted the link to my delicious, with tags.

Edit: Yahoo responded. They are thinking about how to spin off delicious, so it can live on outside Yahoo. [ more info ]
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Jul. 21st, 2010 11:45

Mac

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Mac D'Alessandro is friendly, engaging, well-informed, hardworking, smart, personable, bold, and effective. He's the sort of candidate anyone who meets will want to vote for, and he'll be a Representative everyone will want to work with, yet he won't be shy about his values, and he'll fight for them.

Mac is challenging Massachusetts Congressman Stephen Lynch, in the 9th district, which is part of Boston and a bunch of cities and towns south of Boston, including Quincy and Braintree. The contrast between the two of them is big:
  • Lynch voted for the Patriot Act, Mac would've voted against it.

  • Lynch voted to invade Iraq, Mac would've voted against that

  • Lynch voted against health care reform, Mac supported it

  • Lynch opposes a woman's right to choose, Mac supports it

  • Lynch voted for continued no-strings funding of the Iraq occupation, Mac would've voted against that

  • Lynch voted for the Stupak Amendment, Mac opposed it.

Before running for Congress, Mac was the northeast political director of the Service Employees International Union, which represents janitors, healthcare workers, food service workers, and other low income people. Before that, he worked at Greater Boston Legal Services, which provides civil legal assistance to people who can't afford it. I've met Mac several times - the first was when he volunteered going door to door on another campaign I volunteered on. I've had long conversations with him about issues and about his campaign, and I've seen him talk to others. He says the things I keep desperately hoping members of Congress would say.

Election day is September 14th, less than two months away. Although beating an incumbent is always tough, polls show only 1/3 of Democrats in the district think Lynch deserves re-election. With enough resources and support, Mac can win. Wanna help?
  1. The Really Easy Part - this'll take you less than a minute.
    90 candidates competed for Democracy for America's "Grassroots All Star" endorsement, and in the first round of online voting, Mac came in 4th! That's amazing, and it shows he could win the finalist round. DFA will lend a lot of organizational and fundraising support to the winner, and some to the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th place candidates as well. Voting ends this Sunday, July 25th.

    Even if you already voted in the first round, please vote for Mac.

  2. Pass it On - link to this post on Facebook, Twitter, your LJ, ...

  3. Give Mac a bit of your time or money.

    To run an effective campaign in such a short time, Mac needs to pay for: staffers, offices, a web site, a voter contact database, office supplies, phone bills, postage, hiring people to do some internal polls, food for volunteers, some advertising... every little bit helps, and all of it can go to good use. How much is it worth it to you to have a Congressman who'll fight for clean energy, ending wars, fairness for workers and immigrants, to protect civil liberties? Donate at my fundraising link.

    And on Saturday, July 31st, I'm going to volunteer on Mac's big Boston canvass and it would be a lot more fun if you joined me! Who's coming?
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Feb. 26th, 2010 10:30

Google goes Facebook, AIM goes Twitter

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AIM has added a new "lifestream" that publicizes your status changes, twitter-style, and is public by default. Apparently, according to [livejournal.com profile] antimony, they also make it visible to other people when you "friend" them, which I think means add to your buddy list. If you want to make your "lifestream" not public, go to http://lifestream.aim.com/settings and log in and change your settings. I don't know if there's a way to restore the former ability to add people to your buddy list privately.
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Sep. 19th, 2009 13:29

A Better Pencil

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Is the Internet melting our brains? - Salon book review / interview:
    By now the arguments are familiar: Facebook is ruining our social relationships; Google is making us dumber; texting is destroying the English language as we know it. We're facing a crisis, one that could very well corrode the way humans have communicated since we first evolved from apes. What we need, so say these proud Luddites, is to turn our backs on technology and embrace not the keyboard, but the pencil.

    Such sentiments, in the opinion of Dennis Baron, are nostalgic, uninformed hogwash. A professor of English and linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Baron seeks to provide the historical context that is often missing from debates about the way technology is transforming our lives in his new book, "A Better Pencil."

    [...]

    I start with Plato's critique of writing where he says that if we depend on writing, we will lose the ability to remember things. Our memory will become weak. And he also criticizes writing because the written text is not interactive in the way spoken communication is. He also says that written words are essentially shadows of the things they represent. They're not the thing itself. Of course we remember all this because Plato wrote it down -- the ultimate irony.


Normally I'd post something like this on [livejournal.com profile] coslinks but I wanted to quote all of that, and I don't write more than a couple of lines beyond the link on [livejournal.com profile] coslinks. So I'll add this: A lot of the criticims I've heard over the years of things like LiveJournal or text messaging, have often made me think, "I bet this is the sort of stuff people said about telephones or postal mail when those were new."

I could just imagine people recoiling at the thought of having phones in every house because calling someone on the phone is such alower-quality act than dropping by their house for a chat. Which may be true, but misses the point: it looks at a new communication technology as if it were a mere replacement for something older, and is supposed to do the very same things. Compounded by the fact, of course, that when a form of communication is really new, people don't know how it's going to be used, they're still trying it out and figuring out the possibilities. And those who have partly figured it out can't easily convey what they've found to those who haven't used it that way yet, because it's an experiential sort of figuring out.

[ Though it does puzzle me when people who don't text, compare texting disfavorably to voice-calling. Yes, those are things typically done using the same device, but I should think the difference between them would be obvious. I'd expect people who don't text to compare it disfavorably with email, or instant messaging, or something like that. ]
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May. 1st, 2009 16:53

Boston music twitter

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I started a twitter account for Boston area music at http://twitter.com/musicboston

Because twitter is so low-barrier and low-impact, I'll be posting pretty much every show I know of in Boston that has a band I like, or that I'm going to, or that I think is interesting and worth notice, as well as stuff about radio shows or stations I like, venues, good new albums, etc. But mostly local shows.

Even if you don't use twitter, you can easily check that link whenever you want to see what shows I've posted about recently.

Pass it on.
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Apr. 23rd, 2009 10:40

Facebook vote: a few more hours.

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The Facebook Terms of Service vote ends at noon pacific time (3pm eastern) today. About 610,000 votes so far.

Edit: Vote closed with about 660,000 votes, about 75% in favor of the new terms. Facebook will adopt the new Terms of Service after audit of the vote is complete.
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Apr. 22nd, 2009 21:33

Facebook vote ends at noon tomorrow

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Remember the Facebook scandal a few months ago when it was noticed that they had changed their Terms of Service, and among other things had removed the bit that says they lose rights to your content when you delete it?

Facebook reverted their changes and said "oops, big misunderstanging, sorry!" According to them, they'd updated it to allow them to do anything they might need to do, and they made it overly broad, allowing to do all sorts of things they didn't want to do and had no intention of ever doing. And they didn't realize people would care and get upset about that. So, they promised to ask for comments and write a new Terms of Service proposal.

Well, it's done, and you can read it here.
Now they're effectively saying "put up or shut up":

They're holding a vote: Go with this proposal, or return to the updated rules they introduced late last year that caused all the ruckus. If you had a Facebook account on February 26, 2009, and still do, then you can vote here. Voting closes at noon tomorrow, Thursday April 23nd.

And there's a catch: The vote is binding only if at least 30% of "active users" vote, where the number of "active users" is defined as the number of users who logged into Facebook in the 30 days preceding February 26th. Last I checked, only about 450,000 people had voted, which I'm pretty sure is well below the quorum.

In other words, to get the improved Terms of Service, we need more voters.
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