Congress Drops Requirement to Obtain Warrant to Monitor Email

Sam Harrelson on December 25, 2012

Disturbing that our notion of electronic presence is so different than our notion of physical presence (the government can’t go through your mailbox on your lawn, but going through your mailbox in a Google server is no problem) and that our law surrounding electronic communications are based on 1986 paradigms:

Congress, at Last Minute, Drops Requirement to Obtain Warrant to Monitor Email | Hacker News: Currently, the government can collect emails and other cloud data without a warrant as long as the content has been stored on a third-party server for 180 days or more. Federal agents need only demonstrate that they have “reasonable grounds to believe” the information would be useful in an investigation.

Collards for Christmas

Sam Harrelson on December 24, 2012

collards

Nom nom nom…

Collard Greens, How To Cook Collard Greens, Mess O’ Greens, History and Recipe of Collard Greens: “Collard greens became the official vegetable of South Carolina when Governor Nikki Haley signed Senate Bill No. 823 (S823) into Law on June 2, 2011.”

One of my favorite parts of being from SC is our love of collard greens. Sure, there are better tasting vegetables out there, but nothing says history like a good plate of collards.

I’ll be cooking some up for Christmas dinner tomorrow.

The Power of Selling Out

Sam Harrelson on December 23, 2012

Fantastic…

“Building an audience is only half the battle. In order to monetize your work, you need to monetize your audience and figure out who you can sell them to.”

Personal Drones like Personal Computers

Sam Harrelson on December 23, 2012

Personal Drone

The Drones Are Coming – Business Insider: “For example, if you’re a surfer who wants footage of yourself tearing up the waves, you would press a button on your ‘follow-me box’ and the droid would fly out to you, position itself above you, and start shooting. Once the battery gets low, the droid would detect that and land itself on the beach.”

I’m typically very optimistic about most developing technologies that have the potential to augment our lives and even improve humanity. Google Glass seems to freak out lots of people, but I think it’s a stunning and potentially revolutionary technology (especially for education and classrooms).

However, the concept of wearable computing differs greatly in my mind from the rapidly advancing tech and industries around drones. Whether for military and law enforcement uses or news and information gathering to what’s described in the above article with “personal drones,” there’s a lot to worry about from an ethical point of view.

True, every new or developing technology has its positive and negative ethical implications for greater society (or societies). However, drones are one of those technologies that I’m not sure has a positive surplus over the obvious negatives.

I have no doubts we’ll have the ability to have personal drones in the future, as much as we now have personal tracking devices we carry literally everywhere (aka smart phones). I’m sure they’ll offer many benefits not yet though of. Yet, where’s the line between helpful and dangerous?

What Google Reader Might Have Been

Sam Harrelson on December 21, 2012

I miss reading my friends and people I learned from daily via RSS in (the old) Google Reader. Here’s an amazing walkthrough of what could have been…

Google’s Lost Social Network: “Pre-Twitter, it was the essential aggregation tool for news and information junkies. But Reader had also became a social network in its own right. Four years on, with Google+ ascendant, these same social functions were marked for elimination. And so, its users fretted, was their beloved Google Reader.”

Innocence lost, indeed.

But where do we go?

Fever?

Discovery in Your Comments

Sam Harrelson on December 19, 2012

Disqus keeps improving both as a commenting and discussion platform but especially as an advertising platform.

Disqus gets in right in a critical way. They aren’t selling their advertising strategy to only publishers or only advertisers. They also aren’t leaving out users.

Just as we talk of Discovery as a combination of three things (paid search, SEO and social media marketing), Disqus is using the term “Discovery” as the linchpin for their strategy towards both publishers and advertisers (and especially users).

From TheNextWeb:

In addition, it keeps on improving its algorithm to increase the targeting of the content it recommends. Relevance is key here; it means that publishers can boost page views and drive traffic to advertisers without annoying their readers. This is the challenge of Disqus’ model, but also its power, as it focuses on three parties at once: publishers, advertisers and users.

We’ll be experimenting with Disqus’ model in a few weeks with a new client and can’t wait to see the results. We’ll def report back when we have some hard data.

In the meantime, go explore how comments, discussion and user interaction can also mean a better experience for your business for you and the people you’re trying to have discover you.

Willie and Trigger

Sam Harrelson on December 18, 2012

It’s amazing to think that one instrument has pretty much provided the soundtrack of my life:

Trigger: Texas Monthly December 2012: “Without Willie, there would be no Trigger. And it’s only a slight exaggeration to say that without Trigger, there would be no Willie. Willie likes to say that his guitar will probably wear out just about the same time he does. But instead of slowing down, as most people do when they approach their ninth decade, Willie keeps doing the things he’s been doing for years, and so does Trigger. The pair did more than 150 shows this year, and they’ll likely do about that many in 2013. They’ll make some more albums and write some more songs. They’ll play as if they’re going to play forever.”

Fantastic article on my favorite musician and favorite instrument.