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November 30, 2008

Reading The Public Domain

I'm currently reading The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind by Jesse Dylan. What's both cool and appropriate is that the book is available for free by PDF download or online via web pages (with annotation!)

The preface is interesting, and I'm looking forward to the rest of the book.

Posted by will hertling at 10:27 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 25, 2008

Concerns about Facebook's impact on the public commons

I find myself wondering about Facebook's impact on the public commons. I like using Facebook very much, but it has sort of a gated community mentality about it. On the plus side, everything is so protected with privacy that we have a feeling of security, and we may share things via Facebook that we wouldn't share in public. 

But conversely, it's so easy to share in Facebook that we may find the act of microblogging in Facebook scratches whatever itch we have for sharing. As a result, we may then neglect to share in a more intentional, reflective, and broad way via traditional blogs.

Instead of a well thought out essay shared publicly where our thoughts can become fodder for discussion within the blogosphere, we end up with with 20 words shared within our tiny circle of friends and quickly lost as it rolls off everyone's News feed.

What do you think? Is blogging's greatest danger actually the rise of Facebook and related social networking microblogging?

Posted by will hertling at 10:18 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 13, 2008

When Geeks Discuss Living Wills

Me: You know that, if I am ever totally paralyzed or have permanent loss of consciousness, I don't want life support, right?

E: No, but I know now.

Me: Unless, of course, it's like 10 years in the future, and they can upload me to a computer. 

E: So do that first?

Me: Yes, back me up before you plug the primary plug.

...thinking...

Me: On further thought, if some people from Google show up, and say "We can rebuild him, we have the technology.", then take them up on their offer.

E: From Google?

Me: Yes, and if some people from Microsoft show up and say the same thing, say no.

Posted by will hertling at 10:54 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 5, 2008

Organizing the Portland Public School system data

I grew so frustrated hunting through the Portland Public School system for tidbits of information related to different schools that I started my own Portland Schools Project site that organizes the information in a more appropriate way.  What is really needed is a database backed site that contains all relevant data for all schools in one database. A user could then come in, select a number of schools to compare, and view that information in a table for side by side comparison. It should also be possible to search by given criteria ("Show me all the schools within a 20 minute commute of my address that also have 85% of students exceeding the 3rd grade achievement scores".) That's my long term goal, but I have a few other projects to finish first.

Posted by will hertling at 3:37 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)