Josh Bancroft's Linkblog

Empfohlen von Josh Bancroft
They make the fatal mistake of editing the human out of the conversation. And then what are you left with?

Organizations will work tirelessly to de-personalize every communication medium they encounter.

Radio ads used to be live, personal and spoken by an individual.
TV ads used to feature actual people, demonstrating something, usually live.
Phone calls involved a live speaker, talking, with permission, to another person.
Email used to be honest interactions between consenting adults.
Facebook pages (and Wikipedia, too) were built by people, not staffs.
Twits came from real people, and so did instant messages.

One by one, the mass marketers have insisted on robocalling, spamming, jingling and lying their way into our lives. The pronoun morphs from "you" to "me" to "us" to "the corporation" ...

The public works tirelessly to flee to actual interactions between real people, and our organizations work even more diligently (and with more leverage) to corporatize and anonymize the interactions.

The irony, of course, is that an organization with guts can go in the opposite direction and win.

My name is Seth Godin and I approved this message.

Empfohlen von ThomasHan
important! :-)

UPDATE: You can fix the hole by remapping the “Home” button. In the iPhone’s Settings/General/Home Button, assign double clicking the Home button to “Home” — not “Phone Favorites.”

iPhone’s 2.0.2 firmware allows almost full access to your iPhone even when it’s under password protection, according to a report in MacRumors. Access can be gained through the “Emergency Call” keypad that appears on the passcode entry screen, allowing unrestricted use of Safari’s browser as well as access to Mail, SMS, Contacts, Maps and more.

Here’s how it works:

1. On the passcode screen hit “Emergency Call” button at bottom left.

2. In the Emergency Call screen, hit the “Home” button twice. You’ll be taken to the Favorites screen.

3. From there, hit the blue arrow next to a contact’s name.

4. You can now access all the iPhone’s functions by selecting their email address, homepage URL or address.

5. For example — hit the contact’s “Homepage” URL — and you are straight into Safari.

6.  Hit the email address, and you enter Mail. Cancel the message, and you have full access to the iPhone’s email.

Via MacRumors

Here’s the thing about Tapulous. Their apps are good, and their popularity is well-deserved. But they’ve struck me all along as the iPhone development shop that most resembles the dot-coms from a decade ago.

Venture-funded teams that give everything away for free make it hard for smaller indie shops which are trying to turn an honest profit by charging for their software. But they also inevitably wind up being run by business guys, not product guys. Mike Lee is a product guy.

Empfohlen von Josh Bancroft
I'm starting the lobby movement to get Cory Doctorow to speak next year at Gnomedex 9.0.

You heard it here first! :-)

Last weekend, I was one of the guests of honor at 3PiCon in Springfield, MA, along with Randall “XKCD” Munroe, who once infamously depicted me as blogging from a hot-air balloon in cape and goggles. This has become a motif for me, so that wherever I go, people give me capes and/or goggles. I brought along a set and wore them to our final panel together on Sunday, and Dan Noe, the Pi-Con photographer, got some nice shots of the event.

3Pi-Con

(Thanks, Dan!)

Glenn Greenwald and friends crashed AT&T's lavish do at the DNC in Denver to see who got invited to the secretive party thrown to thank Democratic operators for getting AT&T off the hook on the charges it faced of abetting the Bush administration with its illegal warrantless bulk-surveillance program. None of the attendees would speak to them, but they're on video, so maybe we can identify them and figure out who AT&T owns in the Democratic party.

Armed with full-scale Convention press credentials issued by the DNC, I went -- along with Firedoglake's Jane Hamsher, John Amato, Stoller and others -- in order to cover the event, interview the attendees, and videotape the festivities. There was a wall of private security deployed around the building, and after asking where the press entrance was, we were told by the security officials, after they consulted with event organizers, that the press was barred from the event, and that only those with invitations could enter -- notwithstanding the fact that what was taking place in side was a meeting between one of the nation's largest corporations and the numerous members of the most influential elected faction in Congress. As a result, we stood in front of the entrance and began videotaping and trying to interview the parade of Blue Dog Representatives, AT&T executives, assorted lobbyists and delegates who pulled up in rented limousines, chauffeured cars, and SUVs in order to find out who was attending and why AT&T would be throwing such a lavish party for the Blue Dog members of Congress.

Amazingly, not a single one of the 25-30 people we tried to interview would speak to us about who they were, how they got invited, what the party's purpose was, why they were attending, etc. One attendee said he was with an "energy company," and the other confessed she was affiliated with a "trade association," but that was the full extent of their willingness to describe themselves or this event. It was as though they knew they're part of a filthy and deeply corrupt process and were ashamed of -- or at least eager to conceal -- their involvement in it. After just a few minutes, the private security teams demanded that we leave, and when we refused and continued to stand in front trying to interview the reticent attendees, the Denver Police forced us to move further and further away until finally we were unable to approach any more of the arriving guests.

AT&T thanks the Blue Dog Democrats with a lavish party (via David Isenberg)

A FreeSoul by Joi

Catherina Fake, co-founder of Flickr, has joined the Creative Commons board. News at CC.

Empfohlen von Josh Bancroft
Ha ha ha ha! :-)

Asus appears to have launched its new software download center for Eee PC users. The site has over 3,400 free Liinux applications including games, media players, and office applications. There’s just one problem. There doesn’t appear to be any easy way to install these programs on a current generation Eee PC.

Each program has a handy little “install” button next to it. But what happens when you click install is your computer attempts to download a file with a CNR extension. CNR stands for “click n run,” and it’s a file type designed for the Linspire Linux operating system. The idea is that you can click a file on a web page to download and install applications in Linux just as easily as you would in Windows. No need to type anything into a command line (or fire up a separate application like Synaptic).

But right now, Xandros doesn’t support CNR. And if you’ve got an Eee PC running Linux, it’s runnning Xandros (unless you installed your favorite Linux distro all by your lonesome). So what gives? Well, Xandros bought Linspire a little while back, so it’s possible that future versions of the Xandros OS will support CNR. And it’s possible that a software update could be pushed out to Xandros and Eee PC users fairly soon that will let them take advantage of the Eee PC Download center. But I have no idea why the site went live a few days ago when it’s pretty much  useless at the moment.

[via Engadget and EeeUser Forums]

Empfohlen von Josh Bancroft
LOL I hadn't seen this yet. :-)

This is a little bit genius. One of the new features of FriendFeed (a Twitter-like thingie) is "fake following". That means you can friend someone but you don't see their updates. That way, it appears that you're paying attention to them when you're really not. Just like everyone does all the time in real life to maintain their sanity. Rex calls it "most important feature in the history of social networks" and I'm inclined to agree. It's one of the few new social features I've seen that makes being online buddies with someone manageable and doesn't just make being social a game or competition.

(link)

Empfohlen von Josh Bancroft
Some awesome new features from FriendFeed. I love the new design and functionality! :-)

We are happy to announce a new design for FriendFeed that makes it easier to read your feed and easier to get updates from the people you care about most.

We are launching the new design today in "beta" to get feedback from all of you before we flip the switch to make it the primary FriendFeed interface. You can check it out at http://beta.friendfeed.com/, and share your thoughts in the FriendFeed Beta feedback room.

Some of our favorite new features are described below.

You can use all these new features at http://beta.friendfeed.com/. Please send us feedback in the FriendFeed Beta feedback room, and let us know what you think!