Internet & Platforms

I love milestones.  Times of year that mark change and give you a chance to pause and reset. I think that’s part of why I had such a hard time living in California during college, and why I appreciated the seasons so much when I moved back east.  They provide a very natural rhythm. The… Continue rea...

There is a practically non-stop flow of threats to the Internet.  That’s because the Internet is fundamentally empowering and therefore also threatening to those whose power is diminished. This week, there are two big things on the forefront, which my colleague Albert has written up today.  Both iss...

It’s hard to find the right balance when bringing technology into our lives.  I do think lots of us suffer from some form of internet / social media addiction, and it’s getting easier and easier every day to bring all of that with us everywhere we go. This will only continue to accelerate (and I… Co...

Just one of the many stories to get overshadowed by #frankenstorm today is the opening arguments of Kirtsaeng vs. Wiley in the Supreme Court.  This case will test whether we (as in, citizens of the US) have the right to re-sell items which may contain copyrighted components that were originally sold...

I buy a lot of books.  I find it impossible to browse the web and not stumble upon a book that looks worth reading. For instance, this one. Until recently,  I didn’t think use an e-reader so I always just bought paper books without thinking about it. I love having books on my bookshelf –… Continue r...

Steven Johnson, one of my all time favorite writers and thinkers has a new book out: Future Perfect – The Case for Progress in the Networked Age. Go buy it; I’ll be here when you get back (I love it when bloggers say that — I almost always do it myself). In Future Perfect, Steven… Continue reading

Yesterday, I wrote a guest post on the Google Public Policy blog on “the clothesline paradox and the hidden economies of the web“, fleshing out an idea that was raised at the USV Hacking Society event back in April.  I’ll include the video, below, of the conversation that kicked off this thinking: T...

A few things happened recently, which are causing an unexpected and totally interesting change in my digital life. 1) On the last day of our vacation, Theo dropped our iPad on a brick patio, smashing it to bits. 2) I realized that I could save over $100/mo by consolidating my wireless accounts, and ...

Yesterday afternoon, I caught up for a coffee with Andrew Parker.  After a wide-ranging and enjoyable discussion about app ecosystems and tech policy, we talked a bit about speed.  This post (which I’ll keep short, in its own spirit) is about why speed is so important, awesome, and magical. I wrote ...

This post has been a long time coming. This weekend, we hosted a BBQ at our house as part of the Summer of Internet Freedom.  Internet Freedom is nice and all, but really, it was just an excuse to fire up a batch of burger dogs. What’s a burger dog? I’m glad you asked. A… Continue reading

The Camellia Network is an organization that exists to support youth who are aging out of the foster system. It’s a new organization, just passing its first year, and yesterday they launched their revamped web platform.  Camellia is a new kind of support organization — rather than provide services d...

Today is the last day to submit comments to the White House on its plans for Intellectual Property enforcement for the coming year. This is yet another act in the fight for the future of everything, and it’s a relatively obscure and quiet one (as we expect many more will be, in the wake of… Continue...

In some small way, I feel like I arrived as a member of the internet today.  Joi took some photos of me, which are now in his stream (along with photos of countless other internet heroes of mine). Thanks to Jess for making me smile and laugh as we got going. I am terrible in photographs. I always… C...

Last week, I hung out with my old friend Nate Jaffee.  We played a bit of tennis (on the hottest day I can remember in recent history), had the standard and depressing discussion about how we both peaked athletically at age 16, and then got down to the important business of having a few beers… Conti...

I wrote the other day about wanting a better way to share slide presentations.  I think there is a huge opportunity here, and I don’t think anyone has nailed it yet. I consider this to be an open letter to Sliderocket, which is so close to capturing this opportunity but has (in my humble opinion)… C...

Last night at 3am, our daughter Brieza started crying, Frannie and I woke up, and I couldn’t get back to sleep.  So I crawled over into my office and started surfing the web.  For about two hours, I wandered from thing to thing, and seemed to keep hitting gems, like this classic Paul Graham article ...

Yesterday, I spent the day at the Awesome Summit — the first wholesale gathering of folks involved with the Awesome Foundation. In case you don’t know, the Awesome Foundation is a “micro foundation”, where each month, a group of 10 “micro trustees” donates $1000 (total; $100 per trustee) towards a p...

Today marks the launch of the Internet Defense League, an effort led by Fight for the Future to build permanent infrastructure for defending the internet. The idea is simple: build a loose, permanent coalition of individuas, companies and websites that stand at the ready to react to threats to the i...

A few months ago, I had the pleasure of being part of an event called Hacking Society — I helped organize the event w/ the folks at Union Square Ventures, and it was a real honor to spend a day surrounded by many of my internet heroes. It’s taken us a little while, but we’ve… Continue reading

It’s no secret that Kickstarter is radically changing the way people think about launching new products.  They are on a such tear helping projects get funded by the crowd (the latest being OUYA, an open gaming platform, which has raised $5mm so far, 5x its goal), that it’s no surprise that the model...