Google launches Government Requests tool. Google is now making public information on the requests it receives from government agents to remove content from its search results or reveal private user data. The Government Requests tool currently displays the number and type of requests by country for the last six months of 2009. In a bit […]

On April 3, an Adobe technical project manager demonstrated that Adobe’s new Air software could be used to develop across platforms—he created a Reversi game app that runs on Android, iPhone, iPad, Windows 7, Ubuntu, and OS X (see potential caveats in comments here). Cool! As JZ said, via email, “if this is really possible, […]

Recently, the Electronic Freedom Foundation posted the previously secret iPhone Developer Program License Agreement – a contract that apparently all iPhone app developers are required to click-sign before using Apple’s iPhone Software Development Kit.  Though a provision of the Agreement prohibits disclosure of its contents, EFF gained access by requesting it under the Freedom of […]

The Extraordinaries Haiti Earthquake Support Center. A followup post on the Extraordinaries’ efforts to use ubiquitous human computing to help find missing people after the Haiti earthquake — a positive vision inspired by JZ’s nightmare scenario of crowdsourced secret police work. Did they succeed? “Yes and no”—but, as they detail, there’s obvious potential for future […]

Three great articles with themes and variations on FOI ideas: Joe Hewitt, Facebook’s iPhone app developer, has quit developing for the iPhone because he is “philosophically opposed” to Apple’s review policies and their tight control over their platform. But instead of hitching his wagon to Android or some other mobile platform, he’s decided to focus […]

Here’s a copy of Monday’s NYT op-ed about cloud computing.  The Kindle/Orwell incident broke about ten minutes before the piece closed.  (The original new hook, somewhat oddly, was the announcement of the Google Chrome OS — not at all bad in itself, but a milestone on our progression from PC to cloud.)

I wrote up a few thoughts on Google’s announcement of its new Chrome operating system, designed to permit near-instant booting of a PC or other device to … a Web browser, and essentially only a Web browser.  The piece can be found here, and below: Google and Microsoft are now officially fighting over you. They […]

That’s the question Andrew Sullivan asks as part of his blog’s extraordinary coverage of the events now taking place in Iran.  The NYT has a story out with a roundup of the use of social media during the crisis, while Publius at Obsidian Wings worries that Twitter can be blocked just like any other service. […]

I’ve agreed to be a guest blogger for a little while at the Chronicle of Higher Education.  I’ll plan to cross-post here and there.  My opening question: I’ve recently written a book about the Future of the Internet (the paperback version comes out this week).  The argument it makes has a lot of moving pieces.  […]

BadwareBusters.org was officially launched today by StopBadware.org and Consumer Reports WebWatch. The latest of a string of Berkman Center projects that aim at garnering the wisdom of the crowd through the Internet, BadwareBusters facilitates an online community for people looking for help combating viruses, spyware, and other malicious software on their computers and websites. (StopBadware […]