April 1st 2008
Back in November, I wrote about Facebook facing a huge privacy slapdown over social advertising. Michael Arrington, founder and co-editor of TechCrunch, is obliging us by attempting just such an action — and, as in professional wrestling, for him it’s all about the timing. In his excellent public explanation, Mr. Arrington cites a California law which […]
March 18th 2008
You rate restaurants with online reviews. Same with contractors, professors, even blogs. Now a new web services allows the public to rate and comment on the work of uniformed law enforcement officers. Some sites already provide aggregate data for neighborhoods, but let’s face it, sometimes you may want to discuss the work of a particular officer. […]
March 17th 2008
Where have all the protests gone? Many of the most interesting and successful are making creative use of new online environments. And they’re winning concessions from the powers that be.
February 15th 2008
For the six million or so Americans who live overseas, voting has always been a bit sketchy. According to the non-partisan Election Assistance Commission, only a third of the nearly one million ballots issued last election cycle were actually cast. So, for the first time, Democrats living abroad are now able to cast primary votes […]
February 13th 2008
When Oscar Morales, an engineer from Barranquilla, Colombia, and five friends launched a Facebook group called No More FARC, they didn’t expect to create a movement. But within thirty days, their Facebook group’s 250,000 members mobilized millions of protesters. Last week, more than 4 million Colombians marched simultaneously in 27 cities throughout the country and 104 […]
November 21st 2007
I recently sold a house in a market where all brokers with access to the Multiple Listing Service required a 6 percent commission. The agents had signed agreements to charge a standard commission in order to have access to MLS. Local laws prevented rebating any portion of that fee. It seemed anti-competitive at the time, and […]
November 11th 2007
Harvard’s Citizen Media Law Project has introduced its newest service, a Legal Threats Database to catalog the growing number of lawsuits, cease and desist letters, and other legal challenges faced globally by those engaging in online speech. It organizes cases using standard forms to make it easy to check their status and trial details. So […]
October 16th 2007
Consumer generated content is all the range in the web 2.0 world. It’s now taking a new form as both governments and those who hope to expose governments to greater scrutiny “want to know what you know”. As governments get good at online intelligence, I believe we will find that making censorship and data gathering […]
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