I once worked with a client who would cc: the entire working group on every single email whether it made sense to or not. I found myself reading through email threads only to find I didn’t need to be looped in. It was a massive time suck. At another job the entire organization was emailed regularly on jokes, musings and various non-sense I had to sort through to determine if I needed to know what was being sent. Usually I didn’t.

I’ve found that over the years this is quite common, sending any kind of message over email. The short, the long, the very important messages, messages that should be saved somewhere and those that don’t. Ever.

These types of emails train us to disregard important information and miss the nuggets we really need to be paying attention to. I’ve always advocated for using appropriate communications platforms in the proper manner. There really is a platform...

While most people think currency when we talk about Bitcoin, the real value is in the algorithm. I could get into the ins and outs of how Bitcoin actually works but Bitcoin.org does a better job. Because of the way Bitcoin’s infrastructure is set up, you can securely transact anything. Not just money but contracts, taxes, voting and so on. This is where the real power lies.

What are a few examples? Here are some of the more talked about uses for Bitcoin.

• Bitmessage - a secured peer-to-peer messaging system
• Namecoin - a decentralized DNS service
• Open markets - used to buy and trade almost anything
• Virtual postage stamps - email spam prevention
• Proof of ownership - for digital or scarce goods
• Triple-entry accounting - for government or non-profit transparency
• Distributed identity systems - for identification distribution and maintenance
• Provably secure voting systems - citizens...

This wasn’t a difficult call to make, I made the prediction in this post. The Washington Post has released an app for the Kindle Fire in the form of a twice daily news editions, at 5 am and 5pm.

The app will be free for Kindle Fire owners for six months, and will then cost $1 for the next six months. A $4 version of the app will be available for Android and iOS next year.

Russell Grandinetti, the Amazon executive who oversees the Kindle, declined to specify the number of Kindle Fire users who would receive the app but said that it would be in the millions.

My guess is that this will be the first of many apps across devices, giving access to the Washington Post to many users as well as provide data back to Amazon.

There are a number of initiatives around the country and the world to bring internet to those that don’t have access. From inner cities to the furthest regions of the planet, there’s stiff competition to provide access to those that don’t have it. Who are the biggest players? At the moment it’s Google, Facebook and Elon Musk’s SpaceX. This is a look into those initiatives.

Google recently announced that they’re working to bridge the digital divide in Austin, TX with a pilot program to bring high-speed internet services to 4,300 people living in public housing.

In Austin, Google is helping to bridge that gap by offering its Google Fiber high-speed Internet service to the 4,300 people who live in public housing offered by the Housing Authority of the City of Austin (HACA). Once a household signs on, they get 10 years of free service (and the option to upgrade to more premium services...

Google is killing ads on select sites with the launch of a new experiment called Contributor. Google has teamed up with publishers like Imgur, Mashable and WikiHow to test the new service where users trade advertising for donations.

Basically you choose a monthly contribution and the site(s) you want the money to go to and peruse the site as you wish, ad free.

Micropayments aren’t new (read: Tipjoy) and services like ChangeTip and Coinbase Tip are approaching payments from the Bitcoin angle.

Will this work? Potentially. If it were anybody other than Google I’d say probably not but with their weight behind the idea it may take off. My biggest grudge with the idea is the cost per site per month. A dollar, at minimum, is too much to pay per site. My threshold is considerably higher before I would consider using it.

This isn’t new but it’s cool none the less, it’s projecting 3D rendering objects onto an old church. From the Vimeo description.

Onionlab presents Evolució Signal Festival version, the continuation of our project called Evolució, firstly exhibed at Mapping Festival of Geneva.
Evolució is a project that revolves around the graphic and sound abstraction of the concept it is named after: evolution. It is construed as transformation, construction and alteration of reality through time; evolution as a discontinuous creation process as well.

Created with 3D projection mapping techniques, this time, Evolució was projected onto the façade of the Santa Ludmila Church, though the piece takes the evolution concept even further: It was conceived as an open transformation process so that it can also be adapted to different façades and projection surfaces, and so that Evolució can continue its...

The most recent hullaballoo at Uber is nothing to sneeze at, using internal tools to track a journalist critical of your services isn’t just unethical it’s sleazy. This behavior appears to be the modus operandi of the booming car sharing service, Uber seems to have an asshole problem.

That being said, I’m sticking with Uber.

I find their behavior over the past few months repulsive but they share ranks with Google, Facebook, Amazon, Yelp, Yahoo, Tesla and many many others. The reality is corporate misconduct isn’t on the rise, transparency is (forced or not).

What I’d like to see is a vastly improving ethical corporate culture so I don’t have to choose between services that just work and second-tiered also-rans because all the tech companies have ethical lapses.

I’m not making an excuse for Uber I just like their service. I’ve tried the others, they’re not as good and not as...

I might be one of the lucky few who has had the opportunity to try both Google Glass and the Oculus Rift. When I worked at NPR one of our developers owned a pair of Google Glass and would wear them around the building. I got a chance to test them out, play with an NPR beta app and stream some music. At the time the tech seemed pretty cool but after a chance to experience the Oculus Rift, Google Glass appears quaint.

A week ago, after the screening of Interstellar, there was an interactive presentation using Oculus Rift and a computer model of the ship Endurance from the film. They sat us down, strapped on the Oculus Rift and lead us around the Endurance. It wasn’t just cool, I was blown away.

Thinking about the two technologies, while seemingly different on the surface, they’re both tackling similar problems. Glass is complimenting reality while Rift is recreating it. When I...

When was the last time you finished an article online, jumped to the comments and as you made your way through thought “This is well reasoned and cogent commentary, I’m glad I read this.” ?

Probably never.

Let’s face it, comments suck. And not just that but comment technology sucks. The tools that are supposed to make it simple to engage content and surface thoughtful commentary instead promote coarse dialogue and float the garbage to the top. What we end up with is a stew of off topic banter, juvenile name calling and consuming irrelevance.

Another problem is that commenting systems are often maintained by third parties, at least for the largest online outlets, leaving those that need to hear the most relevant messaging entirely out of the loop, missing some of the good stuff with the maintainers totally divested in the quality of the conversations. Senseless if you ask me.

...

Unemployment can be a difficult beast to track as the numbers and the weight of positions, applications and status can be ambiguous and vary from employer to employer. A thing I’ve learned while making my way through the application process is that from the employer perspective, it’s usually messy. If hiring was more standardized and the recruitment process more regimented it would lend more certainty to the applicants and the process itself.

But, there are numbers we can be certain of and those are the ones we track ourselves. As we search for work we should be vigilant and track the numbers at our disposal, these will give us insights into the application process and assurances, to some degree, on our performance.

With that being said I’ve put together a spreadsheet to help you on your way. Here are the basics of how it works. As you apply for jobs, track the company, the position...