Doc Searls's blog
Go track yourself
October 11th, 2009 by Doc Searls
Are you tired of being hunted down by marketers following your digital crumb-trail?
Linux and plethorization
September 19th, 2009 by Doc Searls
Why is it that Linux distros divide and multiply? And do we have a better name for how and why that's done than, say, "forking"?
Open vs. Fauxpen
August 26th, 2009 by Doc Searls
Tristan Louis gives weight to new term that I like a lot: fauxpen. Faux in French means "false" or "fake". So fauxpen means fake open. There has always been a lot of that going around, but since the world of tech inevitably contains more of everything, there's more fauxpen stuff than ever.
AP Launches Open Source Ascribenation Project
July 29th, 2009 by Doc Searls
What sounds like DRM is really a cool open source journalism tool.
Giving the Broadband Census
May 10th, 2009 by Doc Searls
Drew Clark's Broadband Census is a worthy effort: find out what Internet connection speeds people actually get, vs. what's promised.
Unpacking lock-in, silos and walled gardens
May 3rd, 2009 by Doc Searls
In the Linux and FOSS worlds we've been complaining for decades about vendor lock-in, platform and service silos, walled gardens and other annoyances. So now I'm wondering what scholarship has been devoted to these practices.
What if they gave a DTV transition and nobody came?
April 30th, 2009 by Doc Searls
Has anybody noticed that TV is no longer an over-the-air medium?
Oracle buys Sun. Now What?
April 20th, 2009 by Doc Searls
So Oracle bought Sun. Aside from the usual vendor sports stories (IBM lost this one), what's the deal here for Linux and other open source fixtures in both Sun's and Oracle's portfolios? What happens to MySQL? What happens to Java? How about Solaris? You tell us.
The Need for Speed
April 3rd, 2009 by Doc Searls
I never liked the terms "upload" and "download". I think "inload" and "outload" might be better, just because they don't carry implications of subordination or unequal required effort.
As it happens most of our home connections are asymmetrical: much higher coming in than going out.
The Free Beer Economy
March 12th, 2009 by Doc Searls
Why is FREE! the world's best-selling noun, verb, adjective and adverb, yet so hard to credit as a foundation for business in the Internet Age? And what will happen when business folk finally grok the abundant opportunities that FREE! provides?
Get ready for "fourth party" services
March 1st, 2009 by Doc Searls
The time has come to re-define "parties" in business.
In software, "third parties" have always been accessories to supply more than to demand, because their job in most cases was to add value to a vendor's platform. But growth in customer power will invite a new kind of software and service into the marketplace: a kind that adds value to the customer's platform and weight to the customer's side of the market's equation. What do we call that new kind of software, and the kinds of companies that put it to use?
What's the tweeting protocol?
February 17th, 2009 by Doc Searls
Getting a fail whale this morning again on Twitter.
SMTP never gave me a whale. Nor has POP3, SSH, XMPP or any of the other protocols in the Internet Suite.
FOSS Linux CRM Roundup
February 4th, 2009 by Doc Searls
Back at the 2003 OSCON, r0ml Lefkowitz gave a talk called "Six Missing Open Source Projects".The next year he gave a talk titled "More Missing Open Source Projects".
Keeping up with the Kims
February 3rd, 2009 by Doc Searls
The U.S. government isn't the only one hoping to stimulate its national economy by raising available Internet speeds. JooAng Daily in Korea reports that the Korea Communications Commission has announced an infrastructure investment plan that will increase high-speed iInternet service speeds to 1Gbps, and wireless broadband service speeds to 10Mbps. Both are 10x the current service speeds, which are far higher than those we enjoy (or endure) in the U.S..
Wanted: a Mobile Home Cell
February 2nd, 2009 by Doc Searls
Ever wanted to improve AT&T wireless service? Yah, me too. Many times. Well, seems you can with a "personal 3G mini cellular tower" from Cisco.
Screw popularity. Just make yourself useful.
January 9th, 2009 by Doc Searls
That's the killer lesson of Dave Winer's new apporach to noise-filtered tweeting. "Friends" and "followers" aren't what matter. If you want substance, you need useful inputs. Not volume. Not style. Not popularity. Those have their places, just not in your face when you're looking for useful and interesting stuff.
What would you exchange Exchange for?
January 5th, 2009 by Doc Searls
It's long been clear to me that the biggest lock-in Microsoft has, at the enterprise level, is not with Windows or personal apps, but with Exchange Server. And the biggest problem there is this: it's good. Enterprises like it. And, since Exchange works only or best with Windows machines, the lock-in extends to much else. Linux and Mac boxes get purged and replaced by Windows ones.
Or so goes the story I hear from folks at big enterprises.
So I'm wondering about alternatives.
Why Internet & Infrastructure Need to be Fields of Study
December 18th, 2008 by Doc Searls
The Internet is infrastructure. This should be plain, but it's not. The reason is that neither the Net nor infrastructure are well-understood, even though both could hardly be more widely used.
Let's improve on the pay toilet model for public wi-fi
December 8th, 2008 by Doc Searls
Public wi-fi in airports and hotels is offered on the pay toilet model. It charges money to use low-cost plumbing facilities. I believe it would be better for airports, and their passengers, if plumbing usage were free, just as it is for water and trains between terminals.
Can we tell them how?
Cycles and Simplicities
December 5th, 2008 by Doc Searls
Om Malik calls this "dave winer's best post of the year". I can't recall a better one, but ranking isn't what matters here. What matters is perspective and experience, and Dave has plenty of both. What he says is,
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From the Magazine
December 2009, #188
If last month's Infrastrucuture issue was too "big" for you then try on this month's Embedded issue. Find out how to use Player for programming mobile robots, build a humidity controller for your root cellar, find out how to reduce the boot time of your embedded system, and if you're new to embedded systems find out the basics that go into one. You can also read about the Beagle Board, the Mesh Potato and a spate of other interestingly named items. And along with our regular columns don't miss our new monthly column: Economy Size Geek.








