From the Google News Blog:
Today, we’re happy to announce that Google News is now available to iPhone and iPod Touch users in over 30 countries. This means that you’ll see a full-fledged version of Google News on these devices, improved Google News results and, where available, relevant YouTube videos embedded with news stories.
The Wikipedia, Creative Commons, and free and open source and software are brilliant, wonderful things. They’re examples of forms of collaboration never before possible, and are just a glimmer of what’s to come. But they’re not guaranteed.
Yochai Benkler says it far better than I could:
Social production is a real fact, not a fad. It is the critical long term shift caused by the Internet. Social relations and exchange become significantly more important than they ever were as an economic phenemon.
So, next time you open the paper, and you see an intellectual property decision, a telecoms decision – it’s not about something small and technical. It is about the future of the freedom to be as social beings with each other and the way information, knoweldge and culture will be produced.
If you haven’t read Benkler’s book, The Wealth of Networks, I highly recommend you do so. It’s amazing, and freely available online under a creative commons license. (It’s also in print, for paper lovers like me.)
Found on DigiDave.
UPDATE: Swapped image in for nasty flash embedding.
A recent interview with the design director of NYTimes.com revealed something wonderful, they still write their HTML by hand.
It’s our preference to use a text editor, like HomeSite, TextPad or TextMate, to “hand code” everything, rather than to use a wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) HTML and CSS authoring program, like Dreamweaver. We just find it yields better and faster results.
Hell yeah, it does.
The nerds can get a bit macho about their coding skillz, as can be witnessed in the comments thread over at LifeHacker, but don’t be fooled – HTML is not just for 21st century gearheads.
Why we care
It is nearly impossible to write tight code with software like Dreamweaver unless you’re already a HTML guru. But so what, as long as it looks pretty, it’s fine, right?
Wrong. A well-coded site loads much faster, is easier to maintain and will be more findable by search engines. The files will be smaller, keeping your hosting costs down because you’re using less bandwidth.
Plus you don’t have to buy all that software! The finest text editor on the market, TextMate, costs $63. Dreamweaver costs $399. I use the very simple gedit, a free and open source text editor for Linux, and Windows users have the excellent and also free Notepad++.
Finally, even if you are just writing a blog (or using any other content management system), a knowledge of some basic HTML will make an enormous difference in the visual consistency of your work.
A BMW and a Pontiac aren’t all that different – except in the details. Users notice build quality, even if they’ve got no idea what’s going on under the hood.
If I’ve sold you
Jeffrey Zeldman’s fantastic book Designing with Web Standards is the best place to start. Zeldman explains the benefits of good code in a elegant, human-friendly fashion.
Then, once you’re drinking the kool-aid, pick up Web Standards Solutions: The Markup and Style Handbook by Dan Cederholm. It’s jam-packed with clear and pragmatic examples of well-written HTML.
And once you’re swinging a mean axe, A List Apart will make you stronger, faster, and more powerful.
We Tell Stories is a project from Pengiun: six new stories inspired by six classics, all told using new media techniques like blogging, mapping, and infographics. – totally freakin’ neat.
Over six weeks writers… will be pushing the envelope and creating tales that take full advantage of the immediacy, connectivity and interactivity that is now possible. These stories could not have been written 200, 20 or even 2 years ago.
If you value the free dissemination of ideas – if you believe that democracy requires a free press – if you prefer truth to truthiness – you should care about network neutrality.
First, the ever helpful sports metaphor.
You’re watching a Cubs game. It’s a nail biter – in the bottom of the ninth, your favorite slugger steps up to the plate, and the image goes wonky. From HD-sexy to YouTube-chunky. And the pitch! The audio goes crunchy. The video stops. You miss the home run.
Why did this happen? The Cubs are on WGN. Your cable provider, Comcast, has a competing sports channel that had just begun airing the White Sox game. Comcast dialed down the quality of WGN to give their channel more bandwidth, so that it would come in crystal clear.
Cubs fans run amok. The bars on Clark Street empty into the streets. Riots. Human sacrifice. Dogs and cats living together. Mass hysteria! (Best. Movie. Ever.)
If only the network were neutral, all of this would have been avoided.
What is network neutrality?
Lawrence Lessig and Robert W. McChesney defined it well in their piece for the Washington Post.
Net neutrality means simply that all like Internet content must be treated alike and move at the same speed over the network. The owners of the Internet’s wires cannot discriminate. This is the simple but brilliant “end-to-end” design of the Internet that has made it such a powerful force for economic and social good: All of the intelligence and control is held by producers and users, not the networks that connect them.
Why should I care?
The Comcast example is totally plausible. Cable television doesn’t *quite* work how I described, but the Internet certainly does. And it’s happening right now!
Neil Berkett, the new CEO of Virgin Media (my ISP at home in London, along with BT) has announced that he considers Net Neutrality to be “a load of bollocks” and he’s promised to put any website or service that won’t pay Virgin a premium to reach its customers into the “Internet bus lane.”
What a jackass! The Internet is amazing because it lets all voices be heard. If this bozo gets his way, new media will become a tool of corporations. Citizen journalism and non-profit media are toast. No money? No speech.
And this applies to everything you do online: reading the news, listening to music, downloading porn, and calling grandma on Skype. I don’t know how to better put it. This is very important.
For more, check out Save the Internet, Tim Wu’s excellent network neutrality FAQ and my friend Adam Verwymeren’s blog on net neutrality, A Series of Tubes.
UPDATE:
The Huffpo has an excellent piece about recent news that the MPAA and RIAA are working together with the ISPs to stifle net neutrality, under the guise of piracy prevention – don’t miss it.
Citing piracy concerns, Big Media has made its deal with broadband ISPs like Comcast to make sure its Internet video gets priority A-1 Express Lane carriage over the Internet. In exchange, they are supporting the ISPs’ fierce opposition to net neutrality rules that would bar them from pushing everyone else’s video into the Bus Lane, if they even deign to deliver it at all.
hacker journalist 