WowWee’s Alive White Tiger Cub gets unboxed, showcased on video
July 22, 2008 Category: Uncategorized No Comments »
Filed under: Robots
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BlogHer: Who Are Your Favorite Women Bloggers?
July 19, 2008 Category: Uncategorized No Comments »
The Blogher conference for and about women bloggers kicks off today in San Francisco and in honor of this important event, we decided to share some links to some of our favorite women bloggers here at RWW.
Gender is an important lens through which people communicate and that's still the case online. Below are links to some of our favorite women bloggers and some favorites from some web celebs you may or may not know. We hope you'll visit their sites and add more of your favorites in the comments.
ReadWriteWeb Favorites
Marshall Kirkpatrick
Many of my favorites were named by the people below, but a few unique ones include:
Anastasia Goodstein, founder of YPulse, a blog about marketing to youth that even non-marketers will enjoy reading.
Marjolein Hoekstra of CleverClogs, my RSS mentor.
Orli Yakuel, Go2Web2.0, frequently finds web apps first.
Laurel Papworth, SilkCharm, a fabulous Australian social media consultant I've just recently discovered.
Photo: Orli Yakuel, by Yaniv Golan
Sarah Perez
RWW writer Sarah Perez says our own Corvida is her favorite woman blogger, but she's got a list of others she likes a lot as well.
Cyndy Aleo-Carreira, from Profy, a leading news blog about life online and promotion for the Profy blogging platform. Svetlana Gladkova, who writes on Profy.com as well as the Profy Development Blog is also one of Sarah's favorites.
Tamar Weinberg, Techipedia, is an internet marketing rock star and a repeat selection by several people asked to make a list for this post.
Veronica Belmont is a blogger and video blogger all over the internet.
Natalie Del Conte is a blogger and video blogger for CNet/CBS.
Gina Trapani leads the fabulous blog LifeHacker
Emily Chang writes and publishes all kinds of different sites, including PicoCool and eHub. Her design company created the most recent design for RWW.
Leah Culver is a founder of standards-happy microblogging platform Pownce.
Kara Swisher writes for All Things D and is one of the most powerful people on the web.
Sarah Lacy is a business writer, author and blogger focusing on tech.
Wow, what a list!
Photo: Sarah Lacy, by Brian Solis
Frederic Lardinois
RWW's Frederic Lardinois was a little late to the game, so many of his favorites were already taken by Sarah above (whose weren't?) - but here's a few folks he's adding to the list.
Susan Mernit used to work at Yahoo! Personals, is rumored to be working on a secret startup project and has lots to teach all of us about the social media space.
Xeni Jardin writes for weird-hunting blog BoingBoing and publishes media all around the world and web.
Lorelle VanFossen writes Lorelle on Wordpress, a leading source of education about using WordPress and about blogging in general.
Photo: Susan Mernit, by Brian Solis
Friends of ReadWriteWeb
Why stop at just our list? We asked a few other people to contribute. We hope you'll add your list of favorites in comments as well.
Matt Mullenweg is the creator of WordPress and another fan of Lorelle on Wordpress. He also named three other bloggers that were new to our list.
Kathy Sierra teaches people about usability and design. More than a year after a gender-based campaign of harassment led her to stop posting to her blog, Sierra remains a public speaker in high demand and one of many peoples' favorite bloggers.
danah boyd is an academic researching the culture of youth on social networks. If you've ever got some free time and want just one blog to read - hers is a good choice.
Tara Hunt is a marketing consultant and author. She blogs at Horse Pig Cow about how businesses can thrive in the changing online world.
Holly Ross
Holly Ross is the Executive Director of the Nonprofit Technology Network, NTEN. Her must-reads include:
Nancy Schwartz's Getting Attention, all about new media marketing for nonprofit organizations.
Michelle Martin's Bamboo Project is a blog about personal and proffesional development for knowledge workers.
Charlene Li is an outbound analyst at Forrester and co-author of Groundswell, a book and a blog about how big business can transform itself to engage in the social web.
Beth Kanter is a nonprofit tech consultant who has worked with nonprofit arts and community-based organizations for over twenty-five years. Words can't describe Beth's awesomeness.
Mike Linksvayer
Mike Linksvayer is the CTO of Creative Commons, a global organization working to create alternatives to traditional copyright law. His favorite bloggers include:
Wendy Seltzer is a technology law blogger who writes about Intellectual Property Rights.
Kerry Howley is a senior editor at Reason magazine and a blogger.
Michelle Thorne is a thinker, about free culture and a whole lot more.
Carolina Botero is a Colombian blogger who writes in Spanish about Free Culture and technology.
Curt Hopkins
Curt Hopkins is the founding editor of The Committee to Protect Bloggers, a blog and organization dedicated to protecting bloggers around the world from imprisonment, censorship and other offenses at the hand of authoritarian governments. Curt didn't hesitate for a moment before pointing us toward the following bloggers.
Esra'a Al Shafei is a 21 year old blogger from the Kingdom of Bahrain. She writes at Mideast Youth and at FreeKareem.org, a blog dedicated to agitating for the freedom of imprisoned Egyptian blogger Abdul Kareem Nabeel Suleiman.
Israel-Canadian freelance writer Lisa Goldman writes about Israel and media.
Sokari Ekine is the founder of Black Looks, a blog about Africa, women in Africa and a whole host of other topics.
Who Are Your Favorites?
The blogs above are just a few of the many that are written by women leading public discussions about technology and many other topics online. Now that it's time for this year's Blogher conference, we'd love to take the opportunity to discover more excellent women who blogs. Who are your favorites?
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Could Your Google Search Indict You?
July 7, 2008 Category: Uncategorized No Comments »
“Knock, knock.”
“Hello?”
“Secret Service - open the door please.”
Opening the door, you ask - “Yes?”
“Are you Mr. Smythe who writes for Extrmeme Politics?”
“Yes.”
“We’d like to talk to you about some of your Web activity regarding assassination and our President.”
A little far fetched? Maybe, but we could also have this scenario….
You watch as your door comes crashing in from the police battering ram and suddenly find your home swarming with police
Mr. Smythe this is a search warrant for your home and computer equipment
What did I do?
We have information that you have been searching for child porn and related information.
Again a little far fetched?
Maybe so, but in this day and age when you have national security agencies working with telecoms like AT&T to monitor all Internet traffic, just how far off is either scenario? In a society where even the most innocent thing we do can be misconstrued in any fashion to satisfy the people looking through the information, as bloggers we have to wonder whether some of the things we search for while writing our posts could be used against us.
How many bloggers in the political realm have conducted searches with search strings that could be looked upon as being questionable? Or how about community activist bloggers who search about gangs or drugs or pedophiles? Could their search strings be misconstrued?
As it is, Google searches have become evidence in murder trials in the United States and now appear to be considered by courts and juries as valid evidence of guilt. So really how far of a stretch is it that search strings become the warning flags that are flipped to let authorities know that someone is looking for information on a red flag subject?
We live in a society now where just about everything is suspect and there is a willingness on the part of both government agencies and broadband providers to work together to monitor all the traffic being carried through the pipes. This is a society where we also find ourselves even wondering about who we are making friends with on these social media sites and whether people will misconstrue those friendships. As Louis Gray said in a post today:
On top of the occasional annoyance that youth anywhere from 10 to 15 years younger than me are engaging in the same networks I am, there’s just something that has me hesitating every time I get an invitation from a 14 year old or a 20 year old who wants to follow my updates or be connected.
At my old age of 31, were I to be a “real world” friend of any 20 year old girl, people should be asking questions. If I were palling around with some 14 year-old boy geek, they would be asking other questions. Yet, the occasional eyebrow-raising invite hits my e-mail box, and makes me wonder if somebody just might get the wrong idea.
What if I were to take the next step and move beyond a simple friend acceptance on Facebook or Twitter and try to find out more about this person?
If the point has arrived where we seriously have to begin questioning who we are making friends with online, how far off is the idea of questioning our search strings and what it could be saying about us if someone was looking over our shoulder; and are you sure someone isn’t?
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Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:
Google Releases Custom Search Business Edition
Google Blog Search Semi-Launched in China
Google Product Search Not as Froogle
Google Reader Gets Search!
Google Search Now on Windows Mobiles, Too
Fun Things To Do With Google Blog Search Beta
Weren’t Google Ads Already Live on MySpace?
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Found: George Washington’s house
July 3, 2008 Category: Uncategorized No Comments »
Archaeologists report that the remains of an old farmhouse they've spent three years digging up is the childhood home of George Washington. What a deeeelightful pre-July 4 announcement. The excavation, on the Rappahannock River, was the last of three likely sites where the home could have been. The researchers spent the last few years carefully digging out foundation stones, chimneys, wine bottles, forks, wig curlers, a tea set, and even bone toothbrush handles. (No, George's teeth apparently weren't wood even as an adult.) The image seen here shows the home's footprint. From the New York Times:
George Washington's house (New York Times, thanks Jennifer Lum!)“What we see at this site is the best available window into the setting that nurtured the father of our country,” Philip Levy, an archaeologist and associate professor of history at the University of South Florida, said in an announcement of the discovery.
Dr. Levy and other members of the excavation team said the foundations, stone-lined cellars and other remains suggested that this was far from being the rustic cottage of common perception, but instead one befitting a family of the local gentry. It was a much larger one-and-a-half-story residence, with perhaps eight rooms and an adjacent structure for the kitchen.
David Muraca, director of archaeology for the George Washington Foundation, said the size, characteristics and location of the structure, as well as many artifacts from the time of Washington’s youth, had led experts to conclude that this was indeed the house they were looking for.
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Teaser for Pirate’s Dilemma TV show
July 1, 2008 Category: Uncategorized No Comments »
Matt Mason, author of The Pirate's Dilemma, sez, "Jesse Alexander (producer of Heroes and Lost) and I have been
working on turning The Pirate's Dilemma into a TV show, we've just put a
teaser up for what that show might look like here:
Jesse read the book and saw the pirates I talked about from the worlds
of youth culture as real life heroes - people with no special powers who
managed to to turn society and old business models upside down with
superhuman strength. We connected and started working on this idea, along with John Carluccio and Mark Kotlinski from CurrentTV. The
trailer is an early sketch of where we are going with this.
"Also I finally got my publishers to put the book out as a pay-what-you-want PDF!" Link to video, Link to downloadable PDF (Thanks, Matt!)
See also:
Pirate's Dilemma slideshow video -- pirates will save the world
Pirate's Dilemma author's speech: "To get rich off pirates, copy them"
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Make and Craft @ AS220’s Fools Ball
July 1, 2008 Category: Uncategorized No Comments »
Last weekend, AS220 held its annual Fools Ball, a fundraiser that also happens to be Rhode Island's best party of the year. MAKE sponsored the event and provided copies of the magazine to attendees who signed up for an AS220 membership.
It was an incredible event. In addition to using the main AS220 building (Empire St, Providence) AS220 borrowed Trinity Rep's Pell-Chafee performance center and split it in half: one side was a kind of science fair, the other a dance floor. There was all sorts of cool stuff in the science fair:
- The Make table with lots of projects. (See the earlier Make posts on the YBox2 Dashboard and FoolsBrd).
- Jeremy Radtke's mechanical contraption made of junk found in the AS220 basement
- Will Brierly's homebrewed video game in a homebrewed cabinet.
- An excellent light sculpture from Robert Kieronski of Lumion.
- Shawn Wallace's Arduino-powered police sketchbot where you set the parameters for nose, hair, eyes, etc
- Susan Clausen's sonic throwie wall. (Previously on Make)
- Nick Yulman's orchestra of gizmos
And that was just the view from the Make tables. Elsewhere, there were performances, an open house in the Broad Street Studio (AS220's transitional arts program for at-risk youth), a bicycle-powered ice-cream maker, and a lot more. Check out all the photos tagged Fools Ball.
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Location-Based Microblog Service Globme Goes Beta [Invites]
June 26, 2008 Category: Uncategorized No Comments »
Globme, a newly launched service that is described by its co-founder and CEO, George Lee, as “a lifetime organizer,” is being introduced as a private beta. And its youth is noticeable.
There are several parts to the Globme puzzle. Visit the home page, and you’re shown some of the most active profiles. When looking at a user’s profile, there is a timeline at the top, with screen name to the left as well as links for ‘Contacts’ and ‘Archive.’ Neither of those components, however, are functional at present.
Basic data inputs are there, though, with personal updates and that of friends listed in chronological order, and a Google Maps mashup to the right to spot locations of updates.
Call it a micro-blogging service, if you will, with location spotting built in. Which doesn’t make it totally unique. There are others built in a similar vein, with more features still. And because it sports such a fresh face, its list of activities registered by the few users it has is quite small. Making it seem relatively barren. To tell you the truth, in my mind, I’m a bit torn over Globme. It’s nice enough to look at. Its functions…okay. It takes some getting used to, understandably. But more to the point, it seems wanting for some direction. Like the mix isn’t complete.
But turn that point around, and one might see Globme as a clean slate. It is still in a stage that essentially offers users the chance to really move it in one direction or another. Do you happen to like something and want to expand it further? Perhaps you’d like to see some changes made. The beta tag on this startup is there for a reason. Its creators welcome your feedback.
If you’re one to experiment on occasional and try new things, Globme may well serve your dabbler’s interest. Just direct your browser’s search bar to Globme Beta, and where an invite code is requested, enter ‘mashable’. The first 500 to do so gain entry.
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30+ Tools For Finding Cheap Travel Accommodations
June 23, 2008 Category: Uncategorized No Comments »
With gas prices and airfare on the rise, you probably want to save money on every aspect of your trip. Cheap hotels are one idea, but vacation rentals, furnished apartments and even youth hostels can be lower cost alternatives.
Browse this list, do your research, and see what sort of deals you can find to save even more money on your next getaway.
Hotels
CheapTickets.com - Best known for cheap airfare, Cheaptickets also offers deals on hotel rooms and vacation packages.
ConcertHotels.com - Find hotels near concert venues in the United Kingdom, USA and Spain. Look them up by venue or by specific event.
Expedia.com - A full service booking site that lets you book hotels as well as flights, rental cars, vacation packages and more.
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Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:
Farecast to Power Airline Prediction Service for MSN
Track Airfares on Yapta
RoadTrip Wizard to Offer Personalized Travel Tools
TravBuddy Reaches One Million Registered Users
STA Travel Launches Widgets Suite
My Life of Travel is Now a “Real” Site
TripHub Launches Group Travel Site
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Hackerteen Volume 1: Internet Blackout
June 16, 2008 Category: Uncategorized No Comments »
stoolpigeon writes "Hackerteen Volume 1: Internet Blackout is an interesting new project, a graphic novel being published by O'Reilly. What makes it interesting is not just that this is a rather new direction for O'Reilly but that this is, to my knowledge, a rather unique publication in that it seeks to educate teenage youth about an array of issues ranging from privacy, free software, security and the impact of politics on personal freedom as it relates to the use of technology. Making topics like that exciting, and understandable to a young person may sound like a tall order, and I think it is." Read below for the rest of JR's review.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Kent County Council bans mosquito gadgets from buildings
June 16, 2008 Category: Uncategorized No Comments »
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
For the love of all that's humane in this world, it's about time someone stepped up and put an end to this lunacy. Okay, so maybe that's overstating things a bit, but we're joyous nonetheless to hear that the Kent County Council in southeast England has "become one of the first in the UK to ban mosquito gadgets from its buildings." Here's a refresher: so-called mosquito tones are high-pitched frequencies that can only be heard by the younger sect (you know, those with outstanding hearing abilities). Apparently some businesses have been using said gizmos to keep kids from loitering and the like, but higher-ups in Kent feel this method of detraction isn't fair. If all goes to plan, councilors are hoping to ask the government to ban the devices altogether, but only time will tell if the notion will catch on elsewhere in the country.[Via Digg]Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
